


What Will Survive Of Us

by Ferritin4



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Soulbonds, True Love, virgin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 21:15:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferritin4/pseuds/Ferritin4
Summary: It’s going to be a big deal, his mother had told him, and Nicklas had listened.His mom’s not an idiot.It’s going to be a big deal, she’d promised,if and when you find them. It’s going to be more than you thought it would, and if and when you know it, you’ll know it for sure.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who prodded me along with this, esp Veela Lou. 
> 
> Warning for a very brief mention of Semyon Varlamov, who is a domestic abuser and who used to play for the Capitals.

_It’s going to be a big deal_ , his mother had told him, and Nicklas had listened.

His mom’s not an idiot.

 _It’s going to be a big deal_ , she’d promised, _if and when you find them. It’s going to be more than you thought it would, and if and when you know it, you’ll know it for sure._

—

His mom’s not an idiot, but Nicke might be.

—

America is not the strangest place Nicklas has ever been, but it does feel an awful lot like Disneyland. The draft is unbelievable, a circus of glory and enthusiasm, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t get caught up in it in a heartbeat. Everyone is cheering for everyone else, their hearts in their throats like the end of a romance or and opera, and Nicklas can hear Ovechkin’s voice shake when he calls his name.

The podium is a thousand miles from the tables, a hundred feet above the ground. Nicklas’s hands are steady as they take the jersey, as they shake the hands of his bosses, his coworkers. Ovechkin’s eyes are focused on him, every sky-blue facet, and when Nicklas shakes his hand, a fine tremble is still shivering under his skin. Nicklas doesn’t want to look away; he can’t.

 _It’s okay,_ Nicklas thinks, and he doesn’t know why.

—

Ovechkin’s hands don’t shake when he’s got the puck. Jesus Christ. He’s got a shot like a cannon and an eye for a power-play that makes him look like he’s got them all on tethers.

Nicklas likes America and he likes Washington. He likes them like he likes shortbread, or a trip to a museum. It’s fun here when he’s not playing hockey, and when he’s playing hockey it’s something else entirely.

Nicklas likes America, but he thinks he might _love_ Ovechkin, honestly.

—

Enough shortbread will make you sick; too much of a good thing is just too much _._

They fight. They snap at each other on the bench, angry little hisses in broken English. Alex never ignores him, never misses a chance to talk back.

Nicklas might be growing to hate Alex.

—

They’re not doing well. It’s not up for discussion: they’re not playing well; they’re not fulfilling their potential. It’s not Alex’s fault, but it’s not fucking far off, is it?

Nicklas is old enough to know how a team comes together. He’s old enough to know the way a room clicks or breaks apart, and he can see the damn seams from all the way down here. He can’t tell what Alex sees, because he can’t speak Russian, but if it’s anything close to the same thing as Nicke sees, then Nicklas is well and fucking truly over all the hype.

Alex isn’t the second coming of the hockey Christ: Alex is just —

Nicklas doesn’t know what he is, or what’s wrong with him. It’s so hard to tell.

Alex is moody. Alex plays his heart out and gets in absurd fights. Alex drinks too much and chirps people he shouldn’t. Alex has a chip on his shoulder and a heart three sizes too large; he’s combative about nothing and blank-faced about things that should matter, and Nicklas doesn’t know how to get through to him.

—

Alex is a consummate professional in one regard and one regard only: on the ice, and that is the only time Nicklas _has_ to deal with him.

Nicklas stops talking to him out of the rink, stops going to the parties that he and Semin bully the other boys into attending. Nicke has his own friends, not a bunch of drunk Russians, and he spends his time in their apartments and at coffeeshops talking about hockey and books they've read. He puts his feet on Greenie’s lap and puts up with the teasing because Mike sounds like Kris, and it feels like home.

Nicklas is a cliché, but at least he's not —

Whatever.

—

It's increasingly obvious that Nicklas isn't being fair. 

It's increasingly obvious that Alex is not an idiot, either. Alex extremely aware of what's going on around him, at him, about him, and Alex appears to have chosen how to deal with it in his own way. Nicke can't tell him it's wrong.

Alex never stops passing to him, of course. Alex never stops inviting him to his terrible bars. Alex comes back from his trip to Russia with a blue-and-white Dynamo scarf wrapped in plain butcher's paper, and Nicklas takes it with a subtle, familiar chill of shame running through his veins as he says _thank you._

—

They win against the Habs off a classic Ovechkin snipe, and Nicklas looks at him in the locker room and thinks, _I’m sorry_. He doesn’t know why.

He’s been radiating apologies for a week at least, but now: now, with Alex looking at him, his face a mystery, Nicke can only think it, and hope.

The room feels different, suddenly. Nicklas’s skin feels warm, like sunlight in the wintertime.

—

It’s the start of something that never dies, the natural continuation of Nicklas’s existence here, where he present every visible behavior of a quiet, bookish boy with not much to say to the press. Mike calls him _stealthy_ , as though Nicklas has remotely the sort of emotional control and acting skills to sneak anything by anyone. He’s just awkward. He doesn’t have that easy charm; he doesn’t have the natural, scruffy vulgarity Green carries around. He can’t actually wink very well, if he’s being honest, and he’d quit even trying to pull off charm somewhere around age sixteen.

He doesn’t need to charm, or catch the light: other people can talk the talk for him. He has what he needs when he has the puck and a good winger.

 _Let’s kick some ass_ , he thinks, grinning at Alex as he flicks him a pass during warmups, and it’s like the clouds just — evaporate.

—

It seriously takes him nearly two entire years to get a clue.

In his defense, he… has no defense?

It’s just so _easy_ to throw Alex a glance, so easy to know where he is, but that’s because Alex is insanely good at hockey and they know each other pretty well by now and, yes, accepted, Nicklas is a bit of an idiot. As previously discussed.

Then they’re on ice against the Canes, Alex rocketing up the left while Nicklas fights for the puck at the blue line, and all he can hear over the roar of the crowd is _go go go_ and _behind the net_ and Nicklas banks it around the curve and onto Alex’s tape.

It’s a beautiful goal, and the surge of joy Nicklas always feels after an assist to number eight is abruptly very suspect.

—

 _It’s going to be a big deal_ , his mother had told him, while reading to him about the six people in the entire history of the Swedish royal family who had ever shared a soulbond with anyone, and Nicklas had not listened very well at all.

“Is it a good thing? Were they in love?” he’d asked, age ten and not even sure he knew what the goal of normal marriage was, apart from love being involved. He’d figured soulbonds were basically like getting married, and getting married was, everyone seemed to agree, a good thing.

“Yes, it’s good,” his mother said. “I don’t know if they were in love. Some of them were, I’ll bet.”

Nicklas had worried a little about those leftover soulbonded people who somehow hadn’t been in love, and then he’d learned about platonic soulbonds and bond-clasps and the hundreds of other weird acknowledgement rituals surrounding the situation in his world history class, and then he’d started really focusing on hockey and he’d pretty much forgotten every single word of it all.

For some reason, that moment was all he could think of, staring at himself in the arena bathroom’s dented mirrors. _Ha ha,_ he thought wildly, his ears ringing with his curious ten-year-old’s voice, _no, love is not a necessary ingredient._

—

“No, Dad,” Nicklas says. No, Jesus, Dad, they’re not _sleeping together_.

“It could happen,” his dad says, supremely unfazed. “That’s okay, if you are.”

“Yeah, well, we’re _not_ ,” Nicke says, reverting to somewhere around fourteen years old; seriously, though, _no_. God. “It’s just hockey.”

“Are you getting him a clasp, now that you know?” his dad asks.

Yes. No. Maybe? Alex has easily nine or ten necklaces in a steady rotation, and Nicklas doesn’t think a traditional bond-clasp chain is really his style.

“I should,” Nicklas says. “Right?”

“Yes,” his dad says immediately, and Nicke knows it’s the right thing to do.

—

“Um,” Nicklas says to Greenie, after practice.

There’s a jewelry store out in Silver Spring that has some Swedish stuff on its website. Mike has a car he likes to drive, if extremely badly. Mike has a lot of free time.

“Yeah?” Greenie replies, stuffing his socks into his bag, and Nicklas just can’t do this.

—

Nicklas has his own car. It takes him three weeks to drive out there on his own.

Every time he watches Alex change, every time the thick chain of Alex’s latest ludicrous Russian bangle swings heavy in his chest hair, Nicke feels it in his stomach like a cup of tea he downed too fast.

Alex strips his jersey off after the loss to the Rangers, the knotted tangle of his necklace half-choking him, and Nicklas thinks, _no_.

Alex looks concerned when he emerges, his eyes darting to Nicklas as Nicke rapidly tries to exude positivity and nonjudgement, and that means Nicklas needs to just do it already.

—

The lady at the store is very nice.

“It’s for a man,” Nicklas blurts. Jesus Christ, he thinks, fighting to stand up straight and look like a normal, grown human being. “It’s, uh, platonic,” he adds, a little more composed, and she nods and starts opening the cases.

He has to steer her hard away from the glittery American stuff, past the gaudy Southern glamor. He just wants something quiet, something thin and understated, something that says, _this is all we needed_.

Nicklas has a lot more thoughts about this than he’d expected.

—

He’s glad he’s in the NHL, wow. These things are not cheap.

—

They win at home, and Nicklas grabs it out of his locker before he can think too hard about it. They’re still changing, shower-damp and happy, and Nicklas — it seems like the right time.

“Alex,” he says, “I got you something.”

“Oooh,” Semin calls, because that’s Semin. “Is food? What is?”

“It’s not food,” Nicklas says, smiling. He takes the box out and opens it, looping the thin chain around his fingers. “Here.”

He’s not Alex: he never will be. He’s not a shit-starter, and he’s not much of a jokester, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been looking forward to just handing it over like it's a ticket to the movies.

Alex runs the chain between his fingers for a long moment, the silver like a cobweb around the blunt strength of his knuckles. He takes it in the full circle, then stops at the dime-sized clasp.

Nicklas can’t read his face at all.

“You got him necklace,” Semin says. His confusion is palpable.

“You got him a girl’s necklace, man,” Greenie says.

“It’s not,” Nicklas starts, and Alex says, “No, not _girl_. So dumb.”

“Nicky,” Brooksie says, “why does Alex need another tacky-ass necklace?”

Nicklas should have probably done this someplace else.

“It isn’t tacky,” he says coolly. “It’s for the bond, except in Sweden we don’t have to have to wear our weight in diamonds —”

“It’s for the _what?!”_ Brooks squawks, right as Semin says, “You get wrong choice then, Nicky, Russia clasp all,” he holds his hands out like his fists are filled with coins, “ _ten times_ weight in diamonds,” he finishes, and Nicklas doesn’t care, at all, because what they think is irrelevant when it's —

“Right choice,” Alex says. “Is right choice, Nicky. Don’t listen.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Nicklas says.

Alex looks up from the thread in his hands and steals the breath from Nicklas’s lungs.

He’s not sad, and he’s not elated. He’s _something_ , so much of it that Nicklas is drenched, his clothes sticking to him with the overwhelming flood of — of whatever it is that’s pulling at him from the other side of the bond, a strong current, a riptide of feeling.

“You put on?” Alex asks, holding it out, and Nicklas takes it without thinking.

“Sure,” he says.

—

 _It’s going to be a big deal_ , his mother had promised, _if and when you find them._

Nicklas doesn’t know when he thought _then_ would be _now_ , what he thought he was expecting.

 _It’s going to be more than you thought it would_ , she’d told him, and when he knew it, he’d know it for sure.

—

Nicklas has to reach up a little to get the chain around Alex’s neck. It shouldn’t be hard.

Alex had stood on stage and said his name in front of hundreds of people; Alex had been _terrified_ , and Nicklas had wanted nothing more than to put his hand on Alex’s fear and settle it down, like dog to the floor.

He _had:_ he had done that. How had he done that, and never known?

Nicklas is standing next to the bench in their locker room, in front of fifteen of his best friends and coworkers. He isn’t terrified. His hands aren’t shaking. His mouth isn’t moving, and his eyes aren’t anywhere but Alex’s throat as he hooks the ends together and snaps the smooth silver over itself.

He’s good. He’s fine; it’s just that his mother was right, and Nicke is kind of a fool.

“You wear front?” Alex says, his hand coming up to touch where Nicklas has left the clasp, and oh, yes, the Russians wear the clasp in the back, their long, weighty chains hanging below their collars.

Semin's chirping aside, it had not occurred to him that he might have gotten the wrong necklace altogether.

“Yes?” Nicklas replies, because they do. That might not be okay, but they do, and if it's too short and too light he can take it back, but that's what it's supposed to look like, barely clearing the curve of Alex's collarbones.

“Good,” Alex says. “Is good,” he repeats, and then he leans forward and kisses Nicklas on the cheek.

“Get it, Ovi!” Greenie hoots. Nicklas turns to shoot him a quelling glare, the heat-lamp glow of Alex’s amusement spreading over his back, and Alex laughs.

“Is good,” Alex repeats softly. “Now you have to wear Russian style, not complain,” and oh, God damn it.

—

Alex gets him the biggest fucking necklace Nicklas has ever seen. It weighs easily half a kilo, and the only reason it doesn’t have any diamonds is because of all the rubies.

—

“That’s beautiful, honey,” his mom lies, and Nicklas and Kris laugh in perfect tandem, a continent apart.

“Nicke,” Kris says from beside their mom, “that’s really ugly.”

“Kris,” their mom warns. Their faces are crowding the laptop screen, watching Nick’s fingers as he holds the chain up to the camera.

“Mom,” Kris says, deadpan. Nicklas interrupted Kris’s once-a-week dinner at home for this; Kris can say it like it is.

Also, he has a point.

“It’s okay, mom, really,” Nicklas says.

“No, no. It’s very,” his mom bites her lip. “Honey, I don’t know, I think it _is_ nice. I mean, it’s,” she smiles, a helpless turn to her lips, and Nicke, God, he loves his family so much, “it’s not your style, but it is very meaningful.”

It is. It’s not as modern as Nicklas had predicted, actually. The thick gold links are smooth and oval, not the blocked-off squares of Semin and Varlamov’s trashy going-out jewelry. The rubies aren’t that big, really, just half-carat punctuations between each of the thumbnail-sized links.

Of course, there are maybe forty-five of them. It’s not subtle.

“Where’s the clasp?” Kris asks, leaning in until his face blots out the dining room.

Nicklas likes it here, he does, but sometimes he really misses home.

“The Russians wear it in the back,” their dad says from somewhere behind Kris’s head. “Move, would you? Hi, kid.”

“Hey,” Nicklas says. He flips the chain around until the clasp is in front, two ostentatiously enormous rubies in a little nest of gold, and Kris whistles.

“Nicke, that is hideous,” he says. “I love it. Where did you _find_ this guy?”

“Where did I find Alex fucking Ovechkin?” Nicke retorts. 

“Nicklas,” their mom says sharply.

“I don’t know,” Nicklas says, turning the chain until the clasp is in place. He tucks the heavy length of it under his collar. “He found me, I guess.”

—

Nicklas never takes it off. He thinks about it; he thinks about it a lot, during the first few weeks. It’s heavy, if not _actually_ half a kilo, and it swings down in front of his face when he leans over if he’s not careful.

The weight of it seems to disappear with time, though, until he can’t feel it at all. He gets used to slipping it back under his collar, used to the sensation of it shifting on the skin of his chest. No one can see it, not when he’s dressed, and the team are the only ones who see him otherwise.

“It doesn’t bug you?” Poti asks. They’re stripping off, headed to the showers after practice, and Nicklas honestly has to look down to figure out what he’s talking about.

“Oh. No,” Nicke says. "Not anymore." He and Alex are the only ones on the team with a soulbond, though it doesn’t come up much.

He and Alex are the only ones in the NHL with a soulbond, so far as anyone knows. So far as anyone has ever known. It has not been discussed with the press, or even with the coaches. Nobody really likes to talk about it.

It’s a touchy subject, even with hockey players. It’s a touchy subject with everyone; there are still people who think bonds don’t exist, psychological tests be damned. There are still people who think the telepathy is a lie, people who think that the vanishingly rare true bonded pairs shouldn’t be allowed on sports teams, in finance, in government. Someone is always in your head, they say, and that’s not right or fair.

It wouldn’t be, if that was the case. Alex isn’t _in_ Nicklas’s head, though: that would drive him insane. It’s more like there’s a space between them, a little lake they can send paper ships across, like children at the park.

“Huh,” Poti says, reaching out to hook his finger around the necklace, and Nicklas tugs it away.

“You — uh, I’m used it,” Nicklas says.

 _You get used to it_ is not the thing to say to an unbonded person.

It’s a touchy subject. Everyone can see Alex’s chain, high on his neck, almost a choker. They could see it if was as long as Nicklas’s, frankly, with the way Alex’s shirts never button all the way up, the way his clubbing attire parts company with decency somewhere around the middle of his sternum, but that’s up to Alex, how he wants to dress.

Everyone can see it, and everyone can guess, but no one _asks_.

There are rumors, of course, because Alex is a famous hockey player. It’s obvious and it’s obviously in the Swedish style and there are only so many Swedes in Washington. Still, Nicklas helped them along by his early blindness. He and Alex were playing this well together long before a bond-clasp appeared on Alex’s throat. The leading bond rumor is a model named Elsa Hosk, not Nicklas.

Nicklas has no idea what people would say if they could see his. There would be a scrum, and the Swedish sports press would have a fit for sure, but he can’t imagine anyone would have any lingering questions after that.

He doesn’t hate the idea, he thinks, watching water run over the chain and down his stomach, but that doesn’t mean he likes it, either.

—

 _Hi, Nicky,_ Alex thinks when Nicklas shows up to practice every day. He thinks it from the bench in front of his stall, or from across the ice. He thinks it from two feet from Nicke, where he easily could have just _said_ it.

It feels like Alex’s voice, and it doesn’t. Nicklas can read his words with a clarity of thought he’s never had with any letter, not even in Swedish. Alex is just _there_ , eminently understandable despite the language barrier that should exist.

 _Hi, Alex_ , Nicklas thinks, putting as much warmth into it as he can, suffusing the words with welcome.

—

It stands to reason that Nicklas’s is the one that breaks first.

Alex gets high-sticked with irksome regularity; Alex gets his buttons caught in the chain all the time. Alex accidentally chokes himself with it while he’s washing his hair, but it’s Nicklas who gets checked from behind in a game and nearly kicked in the throat and all of a sudden his necklace is skittering away from him on the ice like a snake in the sun.

There’s a mob above him, skates and sticks and gloves hitting the ice, and he knows — he knows it’s a bad idea, it’s a _really_ bad idea, but he still rolls over onto his knees and grabs his necklace out from between Nylander’s skates and more or less lies on top of it.

 _Nicky_? Alex thinks from somewhere above him.

 _Yeah, hi,_ Nicklas thinks.

The noise settles. The refs are here.

“You okay?” Alex says, leaning down. Nicklas struggles upright, clinging to the chain with his bare hand.

“I’m okay,” he says.

“What happen?” Alex asks. They’re still surrounded by jerseys, by the refs pushing people apart and telling off the instigators.

“It broke,” Nicke says, holding up the chain.

It broke, not at the clasp but in the center of the chain. One of the links is hanging loose, disconnected from its friend, and Nicklas tries not to feel as shitty about it as he wants to.

“Oh,” Alex says with obvious surprise. “How? When?”

“I don’t know, when I fell down?” Nicklas says. He wants to sulk; he wants to stomp his feet until there are ruts in the ice. He looks up at Alex.

“We fix,” Alex says, taking it from him. His gloves are off, too, lost somewhere in the scuffle. “Stop frown, we _fix_ ,” he says.

“I know,” Nicklas huffs. “I just — I know. It’s fine.”

“Hm,” Alex says, clearly putting in a substantial effort not to laugh. _Thanks_ , Nicklas thinks acerbically.

 _You’re very welcome_ , Alex replies, and then he skates to the bench to hand it off to Dan from equipment.

 _Wait, no_ , Nicklas thinks, his stomach clenching, and Alex jerks around toward him.

 _Nicky?_ he thinks.

 _Sorry, that’s fine_ , Nicklas thinks. _I’m sorry. I’ll get it from him later_.

—

Nicklas was right. No one has any lingering questions.

Soulbonds are rare. Good hockey players are rare, and players like Alex are once in a lifetime, and the photos of a roughed-up, sour-faced Nicklas handing over his necklace like a promise are _everywhere_.

—

They don’t even get to go to practice; they don’t even get a warning.

“Backstrom, Ovi,” Tommy says. “In the office.”

Nicklas doesn’t even have his chain on. Alex got it back from Dan after the game, but for all Nicklas knows it’s in a box on Alex’s dresser, languishing in broken obscurity while they melt away in the spotlight.

He straightens up and puts his skates back in his locker. He doesn’t have to work to settle his face; he doesn’t have to struggle to meet Tommy’s eyes. This is just another PR discussion, just another talk about how to — how to look, in front of people.

Alex is miles behind him, his clasp sitting elegant and restful in the hollow of his throat. The delicate chain wrinkles on his skin as it wraps around his neck, and Nicklas is sick with a feeling he doesn’t even know.

—

They go in to see Patricia from PR. There are three other people in there with her, men in suits with notebooks, two in chairs and one propped up against the desk. Nicklas does his damnedest to catch their names as he shakes their hands.

Alex doesn’t touch any of them. Alex sits down in the left-hand chair and leans his elbows on his knees, his hands almost meeting in the center. He’s only looking at Patricia, and he hasn’t said anything yet.

He doesn’t ever plan on saying anything, Nicklas realizes.

They have questions anyway. First and foremost: is this real?

—

Soulbonds are rare.

Soulbonds are rare not like diamonds but like new stars in the night sky: there have been, in the course of human history, many thousands and thousands of them, but you cannot go out and find one just by looking.

—

“Is it real?” Nicklas repeats. How would he know, he thinks viciously, when it took him two years to figure it out in the first place?

“There are a lot of reasons two people might wear bond-clasps,” Patricia says, “and every one of them is being speculated on in the hockey press right now. If it’s a front, or a head game, or if you have something else going on —”

A head game? Do people think Nicklas was wearing that as a _chirp_ , as a trick? Who fucking does that? Or — or _something else_. Something else, like when you’re in love and you want to believe in soulbonds without the _soul_ ; like if you read Cosmo and you believe it; like if you think the doubters are right, and that bonds are just a trick of the mind anyway.

Who fucking asks them these questions, Nicklas thinks. Are you — are you in a homosexual relationship in the  _NHL_ and you, you want to show people? Are you _faking_ a fucking — do these people they think they’re _insane?_

Nicklas takes a breath. He has to say something, and he has to say something that proves it, and that’s impossible.

Alex is silent.

“Yes,” Nicklas says. “It’s based on our hockey play,” he admits, even though that’s a risk, that might take them out of the Olympics, take them out of Worlds; oh, wait —

Nicklas doesn’t know the rules for Russians who bond to non-teammates, but two players with a soulbond may not participate in competitive play in the KHL in a single game, on either team.

Christ, he hopes he didn’t fuck up Alex’s chances at going home a superstar.

Alex isn’t angry, under the bond. He’s a statue in the periphery of Nick’s vision, his eyes looking someplace far away. His thumbs rub against each other in a façade of idleness.

“It’s based on your hockey,” the suit on the right prompts. Mr. Corden. Harry Corden. Nicklas does not know what he does for a living, or what right he thinks he has to be here.

“I don’t know when it happened,” Nicklas says, because that can buy them some time. Maybe he can push them towards believing that it hadn’t matured until recently. “It’s pretty much just on the ice.”

“You only notice the bond signs on the ice?” Mr. Corden asks.

Bond signs. Does he only notice Alex on the other side of the lake when they’re skating? No, of course not.

“We should start with bond signs, Harry,” another of them cuts in. He glances between Alex and Nicklas. “Different people… see different things as bond signs. You haven’t even gone through the tests, right? Let’s talk about that,” he says, looking Nicklas dead in the eye, like a challenge. 

Nicklas doesn’t want to talk about that. He doesn’t want to talk at all.

He doesn’t — he’s keeping his face on, and he’s keeping his hands still. 

He’s going to be sick: there’s nothing in his life that he’d rather talk about less than this, rather explain to people he doesn’t know and doesn’t — hardly even likes, even Patricia. He wishes he could have been photographed naked instead. He wishes he’d gotten in a car accident, wishes he’d gotten drunk and destroyed a hotel room, gotten someone pregnant, gotten in a bar fight, been burned, been blinded, been —

“Nicky,” Alex says. Nicklas turns to look at him, as calmly as he can.

Alex looks just as he had a moment ago, only his eyes are focused on Nicke, now.

 _Why won’t you fucking say anything_ , Nicklas thinks at him. His mouth feels sour inside, sore and aching like he’s been thirsty for days.

 _You don’t have to talk to them_ , Alex thinks back, his brows furrowing, so — so sure, and so wrong.

These are the people who are going to dig them out of a hole that could end their careers, dig them out of a pit of public scrutiny and homophobic slurs, dig them a tunnel away from fans pounding on the glass, throwing curses, throwing their jerseys on the ice.

 _Liars_ , half of them will say, and the other half will say, _cheats_.

Nicklas has never tried to talk to Alex without words, without floating sentences between them, but he doesn’t know how to phrase it.

He takes the water of his terror and spills it out, floods the space between them with fear, and he can see it in Alex’s face when it reaches the other side.

It feels like poison: it feels like a river with no end, rushing out of him like blood. Alex turns his whole body to face Nicke, grabs his chair and shifts it, and Nicklas doesn’t want — he doesn’t want to keep going, but he can’t stop it, either. He can’t stop the thoughts of the future, of the crush of reporters who’ll be scrabbling at their doors like crabs, the sudden cameras, the words, the questions, the anger, the _doubt_ , the very idea — the fucking thought that they aren’t telling the _truth_ , that anyone has the right to ask.

Nicklas needs to get himself together.

Alex’s hand comes up to his cheek, instead, and Nicklas closes his eyes against tears.

“We need minute,” Alex says, not to Nicklas.

“We can hold the questions,” Patricia says.

“We need minute _alone_ ,” Alex says. Nicklas can feel the silence as it closes around them, as the suits blink their disapproval and confusion.

“This is my office,” Patricia says finally.

“You can wait on bench outside,” Alex replies.

—

They aren’t halves of a single heart; it’s not true love. Together, they aren’t one whole, perfect person, but if you took Alex away, Nicklas would be missing something huge.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick Backstrom is a good hockey player. He’s a _great_ hockey player, and a good son and a wonderful brother and Sasha lo— Sasha has a lot of opinions about him, but he would be lying if he said Nick Backstrom didn’t leak like a goddamned sieve.

Sasha has known since the very beginning. He knew when Nicky took the jersey out of Sasha’s nerveless fingers and blessedly, guilelessly got the attention of the crowd. He knew before Nicklas even proved it with a phrase, there onstage — Sasha didn’t mind the reassurance, of course, that was nice, he liked it both symbolically and in the immediate sense, because he was fucking terrified and also _it’s okay_ really felt like a perfect synecdoche for the overall impact of the moment — but he knew it almost before he saw Nicky’s face.

He certainly knew after.

Nicklas leaks everywhere, constantly. He has no filter whatsoever. Everything he’s feeling just spills out and it’s like being around a drunk or a woman wearing heavy perfume. Sasha actually called home the day after their first practice together, because he was not an expert on bonds or, you know, anything at all in America, much fucking less anything from _Sweden_ , thank you to the soulbond gods for that cosmic joke, but he was pretty sure something was wrong with Nicky. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he needed medicine.

“You have a _bond?”_ Sasha’s mama had said right off, and so there went twenty-five minutes.

—

Nothing is wrong with Nicky, as far as anyone knew. Sasha had been thoroughly chewed out, coached, and tested on the nuances of newly formed soulbonds by his mother and father, and he knows now that the unfettered _joy_ that rushes off of Nicky in intoxicating waves is just ignorance and youth.

“He’ll learn how to control himself,” his mama had told him. “Are you sure he knows about the bond? Sweetheart, not everyone is paying attention like you.”

Of course he knows: how could he not?

How could he not?

—

Nicky has no fucking idea, Sasha realizes eventually.

They drop three in a row near the end of their first season together, the last game at home, and everyone is miserable and stomping around like assholes. Locker doors get slammed and skates are put away with force, as though that’s going to really turn their power play around. That’s a stellar idea, Sasha thinks. Definitely bang your sticks against the floor a bunch. That’ll fix your fucking Corsi.

“Who want to get drink?” he asks nonchalantly, because fuck their fucking _moods_. Get the fuck over it and get better. Sasha’s going to go have a drink and then go home and watch tape and think about how to actually improve his goddamned game instead of —

He suddenly feels like he’s been spit on.

Nicklas is putting his things away, a tiny line between his eyebrows.

He’s not even looking at Sasha when Sasha turns around, nothing on his face at all, totally calm and blank and professional, and it feels like, like — Sasha doesn’t even know, like drinking rotten milk.

Disdain; disdain and disgust and superiority and not even disappointment, not even fucking _sadness_ , just, just —

Nicky doesn’t _want_ him here. He doesn’t want this. To deal with this. Nicklas has no _fucking_ idea about the bond, because he looked Sasha in the eye a dozen times during that game and he never once said anything: he’s been talking to Sasha like nothing is wrong for fucking _weeks_ but in this moment he _hates_ him. He wishes Sasha would stop; he wishes Sasha would disappear and be replaced by someone else entirely.

Sasha is abruptly cold. He feels sick.

Some of the Russians say they’ll go out. Semin is ready right now, come on, move it, so Sasha pulls on his jacket and grabs his bag and tries to keep his jaw from trembling as they walk out the door.

Nicky doesn’t _know_. He would never, never do that on purpose, to anyone. Sasha knows him, better than he knows Sasha, apparently — a lot better, or maybe not, maybe it actually is the real Sasha that Nicklas fucking abhors, maybe he sees the real true Alex Ovechkin and Nicky still thinks he’s, he’s, fuck, _whatever_ — Sasha _knows_ him and he knows Nicky doesn’t hurt people for fun. He’s not into that kind of oneupmanship, and he doesn’t even think about psychological warfare on the ice. He’s always been smarter than everyone else out there, so it’s probably not really an issue he’s had to explore.

He’s smarter than Sasha. He’s done with Sasha. He has a piece of Sasha that he doesn’t even want, that he would put in the garbage if he knew he had it at all.

The sticky feeling of revulsion follows Sasha out to the car. It follows him too far to really be coming from Nicklas anymore, but he can feel it anyway.

They go to the bar, and Sasha acts as much like himself as he can remember how to do. By the time they leave, he’s so drunk he can’t feel his hands. He throws up in the sink when he gets home. It’s multicolored liquor and bar food; it’s horrible.

He makes himself brush his teeth before he goes to bed. The covers feel strange on his skin, and the room spins when he closes his eyes; he wants it to stop. He wants everything to stop, for a minute, forever.

That was _his_. That was his to keep and take care of, and now it’s nothing.

—

It’s worse than nothing.

Nicky leaks everywhere, and it never gets better. Sasha is intimately fucking familiar with the resigned rejection of Nicklas’s fucking emotional backwash. It’s a play-by-play breakdown of Sasha’s faults, and great, that’s fine, not everyone likes Sasha — a lot of people hate him, probably, and that’s fine because they’re just fucking _people_ and when they look him in the eye, it’s not, not, _fuck_ — it’s different, knowing just how deep it runs. Nicklas hates him with a firmness that makes absolution seem like a pipe dream.

Sasha won’t be getting this right. He keeps _playing_ right — it’s hockey — and he ought to keep acting right, too, if only because he can hear his parents’ voices in his head and he knows how he ought to behave toward his teammates.

His teammates and Nicky: Nicky, who’s so much more than a teammate, clearly, so much deeper under his skin. So much worse. Sasha passes to him and asks if he wants to come out after games and hands him a towel in the lockers, even though Sasha knows, now.

It doesn’t matter how Sasha acts, because Nicklas may not know about the bond, but he knows Sasha well enough to know just what he doesn’t like. There’s nothing Sasha can do about that. Nicklas doesn’t hate Sasha because Sasha isn’t _friendly_ enough; Nicklas doesn’t hate Sasha because Sasha doesn’t read the right books.

Sasha’s mama asks if Nicky knows about the bond yet, and Sasha says no. She asks if Sasha plans to tell him someday, and Sasha says no.

No.

“You have to do right by him,” his mama tells him. “Even when you’re losing,” and that sucks to hear, thanks, yes — they are losing. Of course his mama noticed; she wouldn’t be Sasha’s mother if she hadn’t.

“I know,” Sasha promises. “I am.”

No. No, he isn’t, because he _can’t_ , but God, he would if he could.

—

He’s making a fool of himself and only he knows it, which is a uniquely shitty and confusing feeling. At its worst, it makes him wonder if he was wrong, and Nicklas is just as aware as he is. Sometimes the English seems to slip and sometimes the emotions coming off of Nicky seem muted and maybe this is — maybe this is Nicklas trying to _hide_ it.

Maybe this is Nicky holding back.

It doesn’t matter; it couldn’t matter more. Sasha parties a little too much and then gives up on that, too. It doesn’t make a difference.

Nicklas stops talking to him altogether, and Sasha knows Nicky doesn’t know. He can’t; he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t leave Sasha here like this.

He wouldn’t do something like that on purpose, not to anyone.

If it was anyone else, Sasha could finish out this shitty season without knowing: he could have lost game seven to the Flyers and known they were all just the same fucking amount of sad. He never would have noticed the ice in the air around Nicky.

He’s so glad the season’s over. He’s so glad he gets to go home.

—

When the flight lands, he’s farthest he’s been from Nicklas since the season began, since they first started playing together, and isn’t that a distinctive and unpleasant sensation?

—

His father notices first, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s very _him_ ; Sasha doesn’t know if he’s grateful for the reprieve or not. It’s not the kind of thing he wants to talk about. He would get away from it if he could, but the absence of Nicklas is with him all the time anyway. 

He doesn’t feel empty, and he’s no lonelier than he’s been all season. It’s just a difference, a separation of two things that should, ostensibly, go together.

“Are you emailing Nicky?” his mother asks him pointedly, mostly as a rebuke for fucking around on his laptop at the kitchen table while she cooks and his father reads the paper. It’s rude not to talk to them when they’re right there, so Sasha closes the computer.

“No,” he says.

It’s quiet for a minute, and then his father says, “He’s okay with that? Who is this harder on, kid? Because you don’t look like you’re having a very easy time of it.”

Sasha blinks at him, and, well — fuck, who _is_ it harder on?

Sasha has to live with this inside of him, but it comes from somewhere. It comes from someone as trapped as he is, someone fighting as hard as he is to get out from under the crush of expectations. Nicklas has to _produce_ that emotion; he has to feel like that all the time. He has to look at Sasha and never see what he wants. At least Sasha wants Nicky near him, at baseline.

All he can hope is that Nicky might be getting used to it, to him. The feelings were duller at the very end of the season, intermixed with other things — curiosity, pensiveness, concern — things Nicklas doesn’t feel about Sasha. Maybe it’s getting easier on Nicky.

“It’s hard to say,” Sasha forces himself to say. “He really doesn’t like me.”

—

It doesn’t go over well. His parents read his press, but there’s a difference between the media and the one person who’s supposed to understand you through and through, for the rest of your natural life. They're not bonded themselves, but they sure as hell know how it's supposed to go.

Nicklas _does_ understand Sasha, is the thing. He doesn’t have a clue about the bond, but he understands. He knows just exactly who Sasha is and he doesn’t like him anyway.

That concept doesn’t win much parental support, either.

—

“You want to take him something?” his mama suggests.

Yes. Of course. Sasha always wants to take Nicky something. He would like to take him something Nicky wants, just to see what that feels like, but they’ve been through what Sasha would like and what he can do.

He buys Nicklas a Dynamo scarf anyway and declines to have it wrapped. There’s no point in putting a ribbon on a gift no one asks for.

—

Nicklas feels very different, when Sasha comes back.

Maybe Sasha had made himself only remember the worst of it, or, hell, maybe Nicky just forgot how much he dislikes him in the off-season and now they’re working back up to it, brick by brick, but the wall’s not there yet and sometimes Sasha says things and he could swear to god it feels —

He makes a stupid joke and Nicky chuckles and it’s fucking _real_. For the first time in almost a year, it’s real.

Nicklas liked him once, Sasha remembers suddenly. Nicky thought he was great, and Sasha had completely forgotten what that was like.

He hands over the scarf two weeks into the preseason, before it goes sour again. Nicklas opens it and thanks him and he doesn’t feel like he doesn’t want it, but he does feel — kind of shitty? Like he regrets it, even though he both didn’t choose to get a present and has no obligation to ever do anything with it.

It’s hard to say what’s going on in Nicky’s head, but Nicky puts the scarf in his bag after practice and feels ashamed about it and Sasha has no interest in unpacking any of _that_. It comes around soon enough. He knows.

“Where’s _my_ present, asshole?” Semin demands loudly in Russian, so Sasha puts him in a headlock and drags him to the car to load him down with all the shit he found for his sorry ass.

—

Nicky doesn’t seem to remember how to hate him. He just drifts closer and closer to something — something like _apology_ , and there is no way, there is _no_ fucking way —

—

It’s a good goal, a great goal; it's the perfect way to dodge a shootout against Carey fucking Price. Sasha is not at all surprised to find himself set up, and he’s not surprised that Nicky’s happy about it, really genuinely happy, because they’re all happy to win. It’s a new season. It’s a new world.

In this new world, Sasha takes a shower and gets the congratulations he fucking earned and Nicky gets stuck talking to Nylander for a while and then, in this new world, on this strange, strange planet, Sasha almost strangles himself in his shirt collar when Nicky looks at him from across the room while he's changing and thinks, _I’m sorry_.

_I'm sorry._

He still doesn’t know. Sasha hears him think things at people sometimes, terse phrases in whatever language it Nicklas and Sasha share in here. This is as unfettered and as, as _personal_ as those things always are.

Sasha sort of wishes Nicky was just saying it out loud, talking with his mouth and lying to Sasha’s face, but that’s not it at all.

Nicky’s so fucking sorry. It’s overwhelming. It’s everywhere, splattering against Sasha in fat droplets of — of specific moments; Nicklas has a way of going through his memories like an old film, cell by cell, but never about Sasha. Never like this, soaked through with contrition and he’s just so sorry, he was wrong and he knows it, he knows Sasha never, Sasha never deserved that, and Sasha can’t even figure out what to feel. 

He should feel vindicated: this should feel like triumph.

All he can think of is his cousin Natya, who’d let her cheating husband move back in with her over the summer. Sasha had wanted to shake her or change the locks for her but she’d looked Sasha in the eye and told him no, no. Vlad was so _sorry_ , she’d said.

Sasha closes his eyes.

Nicky is so fucking sorry. It’s the best thing Sasha’s felt in almost a year.

He’s not really taking Nicklas back, anyway. Sasha never left him.

—

It’s the start of something that never dies, the start of Sasha having a foundation, for once. It’s the start of Sasha talking to the press and _meaning_ it when he smiles at their vicious bullshit. Nicky is in his own stall, solid as a rock, listening with half an ear. Sasha can say anything he wants to, because when they all suit up and bounce on their toes in the tunnel and wait for it to start, all Sasha can feel is excitement.

Nicklas finds him on the ice and Sasha finds where he needs to be and every time they come together Sasha feels just a little bit closer to the sky.

—

Sasha’s parents come early this year. It’s only three weeks into the season and they’re already moving into the guest suite and cooking and Sasha doesn’t have to bother Federov into taking him out to dinner anymore. Misha comes over and it’s the whole family together again, a comfortable retreat from everything.

Nicky declines to come over with the Russians. He declines to do much of anything, actually: he’s been tetchy and nervous for a week and a half. Sasha would like to think Nicky isn’t getting tired of him again, but he also has no idea what’s going on.

Sasha isn’t going to push. He isn’t going to drag Nicky to his house for dinner, not this soon. Sasha’s parents have come close to forgiving Nicklas, but if Nicky doesn’t really want to be there — Sasha has no interest in trying to tell them Nick’s just awkward.

That’s a new development, also: Nick’s incredibly awkward. Sasha had picked up on the part where Nicky was weird on the outside, but for the vast majority of last season Nicky had just been disappointed and cranky on the inside and somehow Sasha had expected — he didn’t know, aplomb? Coherence? Something approaching collected, organized emotions, given that Nicky is all laser vision and strategic planning on the ice. 

The outside of Nicklas Backstrom, Sasha has learned, is very Velazquez. The inside of him is fairly Jackson Pollock.

—

Nicklas fidgets internally for three weeks. It’s exhausting. Sasha is on the verge of getting him tea after practice, or a beer, or a fucking Valium.

Sasha does not have the right to drug Nicky into complaisance, and more’s the pity. 

They win against the Jets at home, a clumsy, sloppy game where Sasha gets a goal and Nicky gets two assists and that’s enough for them all to pretend that they’re playing functional hockey. You take them where you can get them, these days.

Sasha pulls a clean shirt over his head and slings his towel around his neck to catch water from his hair. Nicklas is standing three stalls over, buzzing like a beehive.

It’s strange, not feeling Nicky’s pushback, not feeling the sick, sour sensation of Nicklas wanting something else to be happening. Nicky doesn’t look at him and feel like fighting anymore. Sasha will take the jittery, caffeinated edge that’s washing over him now: he’ll take anything, really, instead of that.

“Alex,” Nicky says out of nowhere, “I got you something.”

Sasha’s head comes up like he’s been goosed. _What the fuck?_ he thinks, knee-jerk. Nicky has — _Nicklas?_ Nicklas has something for him? Nicky still barely has words for him, most days.

“Oooh,” Semin says, clown that he is. “Is food? What is?”

Sasha shoots him a glare.

“It’s not food,” Nicklas says. He’s smiling. He’s holding a small, flat, white cardboard box.

He’s incredibly nervous.

Sasha can feel his own stomach go tense, and he doesn’t know who the feeling is from.

Nicklas opens the box — it’s a jewelry box? Nicklas bought him _jewelry?_ — and draws out a thin, thin silver chain, thin like a cobweb, thin and slippery with a clasp the size of Sasha’s thumbnail, a flat —

Fuck.

Oh.

Oh God.

“Here,” Nicky says.

Sasha’s blood feels hot and cold in his veins, feels like it’s being pumped in from somewhere else. He feels like _he’s_ somewhere else, farther out of his body than he’s ever been. At the draft, he — at the draft he’d had Nicklas to hold him down, Nicky to look at him and think _it’s okay_ , and now, now all he has is his own skin to contain him.

Nicky passes the chain to him and Sasha takes it, like he’s not holding his whole life in his hands.

It’s extremely carefully made, tiny little links and a small clasp that’s just two halves of a clamshell made out of beaten silver. Sasha can’t stop looking at it. He can’t look at Nicky. 

Semin makes a noise. “You got him necklace,” he says.

“You got him a girl’s necklace, man,” Greenie chips in, because they, they don’t _know_ , of course they don’t know. How could they? Sasha was the only one who knew.

Sasha was not the only one who knew. Nicky knew. Nicky’s been worried about this for weeks. Nicky —

“It’s not,” Nicky begins, and Sasha cuts him off with, “No, not girl. So dumb.”

Nicky knew for three weeks. Nicklas knew, and he still spent the time and the money to find this. He still gave it to Sasha, like he wants him to see it, like he wants him to wear it.

He was nervous. Fuck’s sake, he was _nervous_ about this; he thought Sasha might not want —

Brooks opens his mouth. “Nicky, why does Alex need another tacky-ass necklace?”

He thought Sasha might not want this, might not take it. He thought that Sasha might not die for this, that Sasha might not go to his knees and fucking beg for this, if only he’d known he could have had it.

“It isn’t tacky,” Nicky says, far calmer than his heartbeat. “It’s for the bond, except in Sweden we don’t have to have to wear our weight in diamonds —” and all hell breaks loose.

“Right choice. Is right choice, Nicky,” Sasha cuts in. “Don’t listen.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Nicklas says, sly and perfect.

Nicky could give him anything, and Sasha would take it. It’s a sad state of affairs and it probably worries his parents but it’s true: Nicklas gave Sasha nothing but disgust for almost a year and then he gave him worry and apology, and Sasha took it. He gave him nerves and tentative smiles and Sasha took them like water. It is absurd to think that he could find anything Sasha would not take from him, and gladly.

He meets Nicky’s eyes and feels it start to crumble off of him. He feels it start to break loose and slide toward Nicklas like dirt off a mountainside.

Nicky’s eyes widen and his heart speeds up, but Sasha can’t stop it, for once. For once, Nicklas isn’t the only one filling the air with smoke, with emotions.

“You put on?” Sasha offers, handing the necklace to Nick. Nicky lifts it from his hands.

“Sure,” he says.

Sasha may be leaking feelings, but Nicky is a whirlpool: mostly elation and bemusement and nerves, bouncing between fear and confidence. Sasha bends his head so Nicky can reach around his shoulders to snap the clasp together.

Nicky drops the little silver clasp into the hollow of Sasha’s throat and presses it there for a moment. Sasha’s hands lift the second Nicklas lets go. It’s warm from his fingertips, from Sasha’s skin. It’s never coming off, fuck. Fuck no.

“You wear front?” Sasha asks. He hasn’t thought much about bond clasps, not a for long time.

“Yes?” Nicky says. He’s worried again. What a ridiculous — what a crazy thing for him to worry about.

He’s proud, though, too. Nicky is subtly, guardedly pleased about how it looks, about how this has gone, and Sasha wants to tell him he could have had this any time he’d asked.

“Good,” Sasha says instead. “Is good.”

Nick’s eyes flicker between Sasha’s neck and his face. He’s not sold on Sasha’s reassurance.

Sasha leans in and kisses Nicky on the cheek, on the right side. He’s not drowning Nicky in his own emotions anymore, but he can still reach out.

“Get it, Ovi!” Greenie yells. Nicklas turns pink.

“Is good,” Sasha murmurs, “now you have to wear Russian style, not complain.”

—

Sasha doesn’t know how he’s going to mention it to his parents. He comes home and drags all his hockey shit up to his room and stands in front of his wall mirror and tries to see himself through their eyes. He’s their son and they love him, but he knows they’ve been careful about him and Nick. He knows they don’t trust Sasha’s judgment all the way.

They shouldn’t, probably, or they shouldn’t have. Now, though; now they have to. Nicky isn’t taking this back. He knows as well as Sasha does what this means. 

He knows, if he’s gone out and gotten a fucking _bond clasp_ for Sasha, just what they carry between them.

Sasha closes his eyes and tries to find Nick, out there in the darkness of Washington. All he can catch is his heartbeat, soft like a train in the distance, but God, it feels good.

—

Sasha’s parents are not bonded. Almost no one is, you have to remember. Almost no one actually has a soulbond. It’s just that it’s a concept so overwhelmingly romantic, so deeply entrenched in the cultural consciousness, that everyone is supposed to know how they work. No one in Sasha’s extended family wears a clasp. His great-grandparents on his father’s side were bonded, supposedly. They were buried in their bond-clasps.

—

“Sasha,” his mother says when he comes downstairs, “do you —”

Sasha will never be able to hide it. It rides above the collar of all but the most conservative T-shirts, none of which he owns. Sasha would have to button up an oxford every day if he wanted people not to notice.

He wants — he wants Nicky to be comfortable with it, first of all.

Nicklas is, though, because he picked this, and Sasha, well. Sasha wants everyone in every room to see.

“He gave me this,” Sasha says into the silence, coming to stand by the table where she's sitting. She folds over the corner of her page and closes her book.

“Of course he did,” his mama says. She stands and looks at it. Her smile is incredibly satisfied.

Was she waiting? Were they waiting for Nicky? 

“I don’t know why now,” Sasha tells her, because nothing’s changed. 

Nicky _knows_. 

“He thinks he belongs with you,” she says, touching the clasp, and Sasha clings to the back of her chair and tries to believe it.

— 

There is no question that he will be getting one for Nicky in return. There is no question that he will be getting the most extravagant thing he thinks Nicklas will actually wear.

He goes to see Vitaly, whose cousin is a jeweler. Cousin Stanislav gives him the third fucking degree about the design, asks him eight thousand questions about Nicky’s taste and Nicky’s _personality_ and Nicky’s hockey until Sasha finally gives up and tells him what _he_ wants.

He does not have the wherewithal to put it on Nicky in front of the entire team. He barely has the composure to find him after practice in the parking lot and tell him that — that he — that he found something, if Nicklas wants it.

Nicklas smiles like he was expecting just this when he opens the box. Sasha had thought it would be met with forbearance and maybe fondness, but Nicklas is fucking delighted, glowing with it, filling the dim car park with warmth.

He turns around and lets Sasha hook the clasp behind his neck, and then he slides his fingers down the heavy fall of it and slips it into the collar of his shirt, like a secret. He’s so fucking pleased. The necklace shows, just slightly, through the smooth thin fabric of his sweater, and Sasha tries not to stare.

—

It looks, uh.

It looks very good on Nicklas. He wears it every day. It's under his jersey during the day and on his bare skin at night. He shows up to breakfast in a thin white T-shirt that lets the dark red of the rubies peek through when he shifts to drink his coffee. It sits invisible under his underarmour until they strip in the lockers and then it catches the water from the shower, wet from his curls as they drip onto his damp skin.

Sasha tries not to stare.

—

Nicky talks to him now, which is nice. Nicky also remains painfully, comically clueless about the general state of his emotional spillover, but at least when he’s actually talking to Sasha it’s relevant stuff.

Sort of. It’s mostly relevant. He’s charmingly scattered on game days, half his thoughts devoted to nebulous concepts of pucks and sticks and passes, and Sasha entertains himself asking more and more complex questions to see if he can break through Nicky’s hockey fog.

Nicky sends him perturbed little glares, but he doesn’t stop leaking. He might not be able to? Sasha doesn’t care. It’s the best part of his day save scoring, the feeling when Nicky walks into a room and takes up all the remaining space.

—

Sasha stares a little bit.

Nicky looks so  _relaxed_ under the weight of Sasha’s chain; he looks calmer than Sasha has ever seen him. He stops messing with it, stops touching it and pulling at it and just lets it _be_ , and Sasha thinks about it rubbing against his pale skin under the cover of his arty printed T-shirts and — 

He touches Nicklas more than he should, just to feel the ridge of the bond clasp where it drapes over his trapezius. He touches Nicky more than he probably should anyway, but that’s his habit and Nicky doesn’t seem to mind. The press come into the locker room for photos, so Sasha wraps his arm around Nicky’s shoulder and pokes at the hidden chain with his thumb. 

Nicky’s little smile when he looks over, the welcoming glint in his eyes is — fuck.

Sasha bites his lip and looks at the camera instead.

—

Sasha’s chain is terrifically obvious. He gets asked about it and he waves the questions off; he sees the newspaper articles. The Russian press goes absolutely batshit, but no one really knows who it is. It could be Nick, but there’s a general assumption that they’re just good hockey players, and anyway everyone wants a boring romance. They want a star-struck love, preferably with a wedding at the end, because the Russian media is tacky and uncreative and absurdly heteronormative. Sasha could live without it.

Sasha gets his buttons caught in his bond clasp all the goddamned time. He chokes himself on it when he’s showering, and he fiddles with it whenever he gets a free moment, but it’s Nicklas — it’s _Nicky_ whose chain snaps on the ice during a brawl, Nicky who comes up sulking about it.

“What happen?” Sasha asks, and Nicky hands him the chain and _pouts_. Oh, look at him.

Sasha wants to smile. He’s fucking adorable.

They’ll fix this. “We fix,” Sasha tells him, and Nicklas pouts more. “Stop frown, we _fix_.”

“I know. I just — I know. It’s fine,” Nicky says.

It’s so not fine. He’s so upset that it’s charming, so dismayed and furious that steam should be puffing out of his ears. He would clearly punch something if there was only something that deserved punching. Sasha holds his tongue.

“Hm,” Sasha manages.

_Thanks_ , Nicklas thinks, snarky and annoyed even in his mind. Oh, Sasha thinks. Pet.

_You’re very welcome_ , Sasha replies. Nicky’s frown melts a little.

Sasha turns away to hand it to Dan to take to the equipment room, and Nicky flinches with his whole heart, like a whip cracking.

_Wait, no_ , he thinks. Sasha feels it like a knife.

_Nicky?_ he thinks.

_Sorry, that’s fine_ , Nicky thinks back at him. _I’m sorry. I’ll get it from him later_.

Sasha follows him to the bench and wishes he could reach out and hang all his affections around Nicky’s neck, wishes he could give him that weight back.

—

They get one full day before they get called into the office. It’s enough time for Sasha to give Nicky’s bond clasp to Stanislav and to warn his parents.

“Are you going to be pulled from the team?” his father asks. They’re eating dinner; they’ve seen the highlights. Here, hidden away, no one seems all that bothered.

“No,” Sasha says. It’s madness, how different it is here. “We’re allowed to play in the US, actually, even if we go through testing. I think we have to register someplace,” he adds.

Registration makes them all a little nervous. Nicky will have to sign his name to the sheet, too, and that, somehow — that bothers Sasha even more.

“Have you talked to the Olympic team?” his mama asks, and Sasha shakes his head.

“One thing at a time,” he says, with a bravado he has only ever really felt on the ice.

—

Nicky is shattered. He feels brittle and angry and cracked, and it fills the air around Sasha after practice. It sticks to the walls. The metal of the lockers feels like fucking ice.

“Backstrom, Ovi, in the office,” Tommy Marshall tells them. The rest of the team goes silent, and Nicky — _fuck_ , Nick.

It’s shocking. It feels like splinters under Sasha’s skin. It’s — it _hurts_. It’s sharp, a stabbing, nasty little bite that chews deeper and deeper and Sasha knows Nicklas is okay with this whole thing behind the locker-room doors, okay with Sasha tucked away beneath his clothing, but it’s never occurred to him that Nicky might have a stopping point. There's a limit to what Nicky wants people to see, and this — this might be it.

Nicky leads the way. Sasha keeps his mouth shut. He has never felt Nicklas this on edge, and the ground feels tenuous beneath his feet.

There are two chairs and a lot of people waiting for them. Patricia is trying to be kind, and the examiners from the NHL are not. They have questions that Sasha can answer. He stays quiet.

Nicky is leaking a fucking torrent of agony beside him. It makes Sasha’s jaw ache to feel it against his skin; it makes him want to punch someone.

This is Nicky’s show, Sasha reminds himself. Nicklas is the one who never wanted this to get out.

—

Sasha knows exactly what he’s losing to the public with this whole fiasco. He looked into it a year ago, and he’s past accepting the fact that the KHL will never have him back. Players with a soulbond are not allowed on the Russian Olympic team, nor are they allowed to play for Russia in the IIHF, although those rules can be bent a little if both members of the bond aren’t on the same team.

Sasha fully expects them to bend that rule for him.

It’s not hubris. If he was mythologically cocky and youthfully stupid he might have made the whole thing clear to the world himself: he might have said something that wasn’t so fucking vague, but he knew — he knew all along —

He knew exactly what else he might lose, if it came to this.

—

Nicklas hates this. He hates the whole experience, more than he ever hated Sasha, and Sasha can’t really tell the two apart right now.

“Is it real?” Nicky repeats back to the first examiner. His voice is perfectly toneless. 

Inside, he is a falling off a cliff with no end. Inside, he is screaming.

Nicklas tells them that the bond is real — that it’s not made up, as though anyone would make this up, as though anyone would go through this, as though Sasha would give up the national team for a _lie_ —

“You only notice the bond signs on the ice?” Mr. Corden asks.

Sasha wants to say _no_. He would like to say _what the fuck is wrong with you shitheads_ , or maybe just pick up his chair and throw it through Patricia’s nice plate-glass window. They don’t get to come near him — near _Nicky_ — and ask these things. 

Nicklas is very still. His face is pale and his lips are white as they press together. He doesn’t want this; Sasha can feel his stomach churn. 

Sasha can feel him fighting back, pushing hard, and then he comes apart like a bomb going off.

He’s so scared. He’s not — Sasha can’t tell what he’s scared of, but he’s not angry with Sasha, that’s for fucking sure. 

“Nicky,” he says, and Nicky turns to meet his eyes.

Nicklas’s jaw is clenched; Sasha can feel the grind of his teeth. He’s on the verge of tears. Oh, shit.

_Why won’t you fucking say anything_ , Nicky thinks, desperate. Oh. Sasha fucked this one up. 

_You don’t have to talk to them_ , Sasha thinks back. He never has to. Never. He never fucking has to feel like this, not when there’s two of them —

Nick opens his heart and fucking hemorrhages misery. Somewhere in Nicky’s mind, they’re helpless, pursued and hated and struggling, hanging on and trying to stay where they are and Sasha, Jesus, Sasha wants to know why Nicky thinks anyone would ever hate him enough to cancel his contract; for Christ’s sake, Nicklas doesn’t even have to skip the Olympics.

It’s not the thought of losing hockey that’s getting to Nicky, though, not as much as the threat of being asked to _prove_ it, and that makes no sense, because they _can_ prove it, easily. They can and they will. It’s in the rules, but Nicky really, really hates the idea of anyone else getting — getting near the bond, as though anyone out there can even begin to fucking comprehend it.

As if anyone can touch them.

Sasha brings his hand up to Nicky’s cheek. Nicky’s eyelashes are damp on his palm.

“We need minute,” Sasha says, and they fucking get it.

—

The bond has no language. Some people with soulbonds do share a mother tongue, which is the topic of many very speculative and dry papers about communication, the human mind, et cetera. There are suppositions that maybe it _is_ a language and the bonded don’t know it, or something, but Sasha knows better.

He knows because when Nicky thinks his name, it’s not _Sasha_ or _Alex_ or _Ovi_ , even if that’s how it started out in Nicky's mind. It’s just an incorporeal amalgamation of what Sasha has deemed _Sasha Things_ — weird stuff, like his height and the color of his hair, squashed together with a clinging, steady fondness, and now a bone-deep faith that Sasha’s never felt before.

Sasha doesn’t know what Nicky’s name sounds like from him to Nicklas. Maybe it’s just the regular syllables; maybe this is all related to Nicklas’s chronic emotional incontinence. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t mind.

_It’s okay_ , Sasha thinks, and Nicky just thinks Sasha Things back at him. 

“Nicky,” Sasha says out loud. “They not gonna take anything from us.”

Nicklas swallows and moves his face away. Sasha lets him go, but he can feel his own brows pull together. 

“Sorry,” Nicky says. He’s hoarse.

“Sorry for what?” Sasha says, and Nicky looks up at him, all questions.

_Oh, sorry for the breakdown?_ Sasha thinks, smiling. _You do that all the time._

_What_ , Nicky thinks. _What?_

Sasha blinks. Right. He’s not sure he can illustrate, but maybe.

Nicky’s eyes go wide and white all around when Sasha puts his hand on Nicklas’s knee and tries to — tries to poke a few holes in whatever shell naturally sits around himself, whatever wall that’s always been missing from Nicky.

_Oh my God_ , Nicklas thinks, horrified, _what?_

It’s not a bad thing. Well, it’s kind of comical from time to time, but it’s not like Sasha wants it to stop. It’s sort of —

_Always?_ Nicky thinks. _I do that? Did I always do that?_

Sasha shrugs. Pretty much. What, he never did anything embarrassing, just kind of spilled the things he was feeling around like so much oil on the floor.

Nicky goes pale. His façade is threatening to crumble again. He puts his face in his hands and closes his eyes, and now, now his hands are shaking, which makes no sense. The examiners are long gone, so unless this is some kind of delayed adrenaline thing, Sasha is at a loss.

_I’m sorry_ , Nicky thinks, tight and ashamed. Sasha can feel him trying to pin his feelings inside.

It’s not working. It’s not working at all, which is — Nicky can’t, he _can’t_ , and shit, maybe he’s permanently broken but Sasha still loves him.

_Sorry for what?_ Sasha thinks back.

Nicky opens his eyes and peeks up at him over the steeple of his fingertips.

_Before_ , he thinks reluctantly. _Last year?_

Oh. Right.

_I didn’t mean to,_ Nicky thinks, despondent, and Sasha knows. Nicklas would never have done that on purpose. He knows.

_It’s okay,_ Sasha assures him. _We’re fine now, Nicky_.

Nicky sighs, audibly.

_Of course now you owe me forever for being a meanie,_ Sasha thinks.

Nicky scowls and sits up straight, then deflates.

_Nicky,_ Sasha thinks, nudging Nicklas’s ankle with his foot, and Nicky looks pathetic and thinks Sasha Things at him, fairly pathetically.

_I’m so sorry_ , Nicklas thinks again.

_Don’t sulk_ , Sasha thinks. _We’re going to fix this_.

_I want my necklace back,_ Nicky thinks, very clearly sulking, but at least he’s not scared any more.


	3. Chapter 3

_It’s going to be a big deal_ , his mother had told him.

Nicklas had listened, if badly. He'd listened, but he could never have known.

They’re the first players to be publicly bonded in the NHL. _Ever._

“Somebody gotta go number one,” Alex says, leaning back in his chair, and Nicklas looks at the wall of cameras assembling in front of them and wishes he could just slide under the table and disappear.

Alex is a force of nature. Alex at his best is an act of God, and just because Nicklas can always see it coming doesn’t mean he wants to be in the middle of it.

His mother had called him, when they’d gotten out of the meeting with Patricia. Alex had barely had time to walk Nicklas to the lockers and then Nicklas’s phone had exploded and his mother had been beside herself, worried for him, worried for his career, almost as terrified as Nicklas himself.

He had excused himself, of course. He could take a call in the privacy of an equipment room if he needed to.

“Are you suspended?” she had asked, and Nicklas had blinked at the wall and felt the floor fall out from under him again.

He didn’t fucking know; he didn’t fucking know _anything_. He needed to know. He needed to have prepared for this.

Alex was somewhere out there, on the other side of two doors and a hallway, and Nicklas had never tried to get his attention from this far away, but he’d never needed him like he did now.

_Alex_ , he had thought. _Alex!_

_Nicky?_ Alex had thought, sharp with concern.

_I’m fine,_ Nicklas thought. He could lie like this, if he wanted to.

_Yes_ , Alex thought, and oh, God, Nicklas could _feel_ him from here, just a whisper of his presence, like a hand outstretched. He closed his eyes and put his head against the door and reached for it.

“Honey?” his mom said.

_Are we suspended?_ Nicklas asked.

_No, Nicky,_ Alex had thought.

“No, mom,” Nicklas had said. “No.”

—

Now — now is a press conference, the first one held officially since the quick sound bites the management had given after the game. Now is questions from the media, hopefully mostly for Alex.

_I’ll save some for you_ , Alex thinks. He’s smiling. God knows how he’s smiling at a time like this.

Nicklas doesn’t have that energy, that spark that Alex does, the thing that pushes him through the worst of times. Nicklas doesn’t have that waterproof joy, the lightness of being that lets Alex play through the publicity and the hell and then go out and smile at the cameras.

Of course, Nicklas doesn’t have his necklace, either.

_It’s being fixed_ , Alex thinks at him. His mental handwriting is mostly amused.

Nicklas has only had three days since the game; he’s only had three days to get used to Alex replying to the things he’s feeling like he said them on purpose, like he grabbed Alex’s shirt and whispered in his ear.

It’s disconcerting.

Nicklas could live without the reminder that he — that he can’t keep himself quiet, that he’s spent over a year with his mental tongue wagging, saying — saying everything he — 

_Nicky_ , Alex thinks. 

_I’m sorry,_ Nicklas thinks, for the fiftieth time.

_Shh,_ Alex replies, and Nicklas would feel better if he _could_ fucking _shh_ ; he’d feel better if he was alone in his own damn room with his fucking bond-clasp on and nobody trying to talk to him, but the world doesn’t have _better_ in store for him this afternoon.

_I hate this,_ Nicklas thinks mulishly. The reporters are slowly filing in, respectful in the run-up like they always are. The cameras are all in place. Their microphones are in front of them.

_You hate everything,_ Alex thinks, smiling down at his own hands on the table. _You hate everything in this entire room._

That may be true. Nicklas hates their uncomfortable chairs and he hates talking to people he doesn’t know; he hates the person who’s moderating, although he normally reserves only mild distaste for her. Today is a special day, a day for hating things.

_I like you fine_ , Nicklas thinks acerbically.

Alex reaches across the table for Nicklas’s hand and laces their fingers together.

Oh.

I feels like hooking his finger around his bond-clasp; it feels like pulling the covers up to his chin against the cold. He closes his eyes into it.

The cameras go nuts. Nicklas opens his eyes and forces himself to sit up straight.

—

The first question is for Alex, and the second, and the third.

_Next one’s you,_ Alex thinks, shooting him a look, and Nicklas shakes his head and meets Alex’s eyes.

_No, no, please go on,_ he thinks. Alex smiles.

Nicklas can almost pretend they're not here. He shouldn’t be pretending anything; he needs to focus and make sure he comes across as serious about his hockey, as serious about this historic responsibility.

“One for Backy?” Alex says. He’s not even looking at the loathsome moderator, but it doesn’t matter —

“Nicklas,” says Roger from the Post, “how do you feel about representing the first bonded pair in the NHL as two international players? Are there expectations for you two to conform to North American bond traditions?”

It’s a softball. They could’ve asked him how he feels about personally destroying Alex’s chances to play in Russia ever again, or wrecking most of his international hopes. This is nice of Roger, really.

_There’s the expectation that we talk to everyone and their damn grandmother about it_ , Nicklas thinks. _That’s a uniquely North American tradition_.

“He think at home maybe he don’t have to talk about it,” Alex says into the microphone, what, _fuck_ , he — Nicklas has been _betrayed_.

“Don’t listen to him,” Nicklas cuts in.

“He wrong, though,” Alex continues gleefully, and Nicklas knocks their joined hands against the table.

_Shut up_ , he thinks.

_Talk_ , Alex thinks back.

“It’s an important thing to both of us,” Nicklas says into the microphone. Fuck, he should look at the cameras, or at Roger —

Roger is smiling, soft and a little sly, like he’s laughing with Nick at something. A camera flashes, and Nicklas blinks for a moment.

The room is warm, suddenly open and alive and waiting, waiting for him without malice.

_Talk, Nicky_ , Alex thinks, drifting into the back of his mind, warm against his palm _._

“We plan to take it very seriously,” Nicklas says.

—

There is, in fact, testing. The NHL adapts it, charmingly, from the US State Department’s protocol for evaluating people with soulbonds who are applying to work in jobs with security clearance.

Nicklas is at home when he gets the call from the team.

“What? Do they think we want to steal NHL secrets?” Nicklas says. This is fucking ridiculous.

“It’s a precautionary measure,” Patricia says, just one of many voices ready to reassure him that this is the way to go, that it’s this or nothing.

—

_Security clearance_ , Nicklas thinks angrily into the silence of his living room. 

He can’t stand this.

He puts his hands on the cool countertop and closes his eyes and —

_Alex_ , he thinks, as loudly as he can.

He can feel the vast ring of empty space around him, like the darkness behind his eyes is stretched out for miles.

He wants his fucking bond-clasp. He wants to be on the ice again with Alex, with nothing to think about but hockey. Instead he has this: his kitchen and his own thoughts and empty fucking space.

Alex is somewhere very, very far away, and Nicklas can’t —

_Nicky?_ Alex thinks, sleepy and slow, and oh.

He was napping.

_Uh, sorry_ , Nicklas thinks.

_It’s okay,_ Alex replies. _What’s going on?_ Nicklas tries to tell him.

Alex thinks the security clearance is bullshit, too, although he’s substantially less fazed by the fundamental invasiveness of it. 

_Is this because you’re Russian?_ Nicklas asks. He leans down onto his elbows on the counter and rests his forehead on his hands.

_What’s that supposed to mean?_ Alex thinks, and Nicklas can tell he’s being teased.

Nicklas risks opening his eyes. It doesn’t feel any different.

_Well, I don’t know if you realized, but in Sweden we have civil rights —_

_In Russia we have respect for each others’ important cultural traditions_ , Alex interrupts.

Nicklas jerks backward. He didn’t know they _could_ interrupt each other.

_Is invasion of personal privacy a Russian cultural tradition?_ Nicklas manages, which, actually — Alex is a lot handsier with Nick than anyone else on the team, apart from Greenie when he’s very drunk.

_You finally understand_ , Alex thinks, horribly smug, and then, _why is Greenie messing with you?_

—

Nicklas thinks — Nicklas is fairly certain that Alex can’t hear his general emotions from all the way in his hideous Russian mansion in Arlington, not unless Nicklas is actively trying to find him.

It’s bad enough that Nicklas can’t be quiet, can’t settle down even when he’s trying; he doesn’t need to spill over for miles. He doesn’t need for Alex to have to deal with that all the time.

—

The tests are very easy.

“Describe the slide being displayed in Mr. Ovechkin’s room,” Nicklas’s handler asks, so Nicklas takes a breath and closes his eyes.

_You don’t have to do that,_ Alex thinks immediately.

_I don’t want to look at his stupid beard_ , Nicklas retorts. _What’s on the slide?_

_That ugly Seurat painting,_ Alex thinks. 

Nicklas’s handler taps his index finger on the cool metal table. Nicklas opens his eyes.

“Mr. Backstrom?” his handler says.

_What are you talking about?_ Nicklas thinks.

_It’s called Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte_ , Alex thinks. _It’s the only thing he ever painted, come on._

_He only painted one painting?_ Nicklas asks. _That’s crazy, how is it famous enough_ —

“Sir —”

“It’s a painting,” Nicklas says. “Called Sunday afternoon on — on an island. I’m sorry. If I’m honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.”

“Can you describe what it looks like?” his handler says. “Just to be complete,” he adds, lifting his pen as if to take notes, and Nicklas feels the bile rise in his throat.

As if he and Alex are pulling a trick; as if anyone would ever do this on purpose. As if Nicklas would lie about this, right now, locked in a blank white room, on the other side of a wall from Alex, fulfilling their petty little demands.

_What does it look like_ , Nicklas thinks, livid.

_It’s a bunch of people in a park by a lake. There are dogs, and a monkey_ , Alex thinks. _Seriously, Nicky?_

“It’s a park full of people and animals. There’s a monkey, and a lake,” Nicklas says. His handler blinks. His fingers are motionless on the pen. _Why do you know this?_

_It’s not my fault that Swedish education is lacking in the arts_ , Alex thinks.

“He thinks it’s ugly, by the way,” Nicklas says mildly, “just to be complete.”

—

They get to play again once the tests are done and publicized, one full week from their last game. It’s an away against New Jersey; half the state is here to see them.

There’s security outside the rink, and Nicklas wonders when this will end.

“Nicky,” Alex says as they change in the lockers. “Got you present.”

Nicklas is so, so fucking grateful, God, _finally_ —

“Wow, Nick,” Greenie says fondly, “it’s just as ugly as the last time I saw it.”

It is just exactly as ugly as the last time Nicky saw it, too, and he has never known a better gift in his life.

It looks almost normal-sized in Alex’s hands. Nicklas reaches out and lets Alex spill the gold onto his palm, heavy and precious.

“Thank you,” Nicklas says, because the team should — they should hear him say it. They should know how much he wants this. He hates the limelight and they all damn well know that, but he should make this, at least, clear.

_You’re welcome,_ Alex thinks, serious, and Nicklas glances up at him.

Alex looks like he’s forgotten the room exists, forgotten Greenie and hockey entirely.

Nicklas can’t feel Alex’s emotions any better than he could before his chain snapped. He can’t figure out what Alex is thinking just by looking at him, just by standing next to him. It only goes one way, because Nicklas can’t get himself the fuck together, and it leaves Nicklas looking into the warm blue of Alex’s eyes and wondering what Nick could possibly have done to put that expression on his face.

_Alex?_ Nicklas thinks. Alex looks down at Nicklas’s hands and up again.

He looks like he had when Nicklas had first given him his bond-clasp, like Nicklas would disappear if he looked away, like he would look forever to keep him there.

_Are you going to put it on?_ Alex thinks finally.

_You don’t want to?_ Nicklas thinks, because he’s not going anywhere even if Alex does blink.

—

Alex’s hands are warm on Nicklas’s neck, his fingers blunt and careful. He holds the ends of the necklace together and sweeps Nicklas’s hair out of the way before he hooks the clasp together.

There are other people here. There are other people _talking,_ even, commenting on this, probably, but all Nicklas can see is the face of his locker where’s he’s turned around to let Alex stand behind him and all he can feel is the weight of the chain on his collarbones, the gentle brush of Alex’s knuckles as he twists the clasp into place.

Alex reaches out and draws a finger down the bumps of Nicklas’s spine until he touches the clasp, and then he steps back.

—

Nicklas isn’t thinking anything.

Nicklas keeps his eyes on his hands as he dresses. He keeps his mind blank, but he knows there’s no such thing as true blankness, no protection even in his own mind, and he wishes he had learned — somewhere in some distant, perfect past — to control himself.

—

The game is a massacre, in more ways than one.

The Devils are distracted and easily confused. The fans are loud; the fans are deafening. Nicklas keeps his eyes on the ice and tries not to read the signs.

The game is a massacre because the Capitals win 4-0, and because there are downsides to soulbonds that the NHL does not yet have rules to address.

Nicklas draws a penalty for hooking, and then a no-call for high-sticking, and then Alex gets the puck on the breakaway and the Devils’ third-line center fucking boards Nicklas like they’re in the Cup final.

Nicklas sees Alex stutter at the hit before he loses sight of him behind the refs.

These assholes, these absolute — at least they’re going on the damn powerplay, Nicklas thinks, before his knees hit the ice.

—

They don’t ever get to the powerplay; Alex scores anyway.

—

_These pieces of shit_ , Alex thinks viciously as he skates up to the bench.

Nicklas has a cut on his lip and a bruise on his knee, but they’re still winning. Alex sits down and reaches across him to grab a free water bottle.

_If you weren’t so good, this would be a lot easier for both of us,_ Nicklas teases.

_You love it,_ Alex thinks, turning so that Nicklas can see the curve of his smile, the sweat-damp curls at his temple and the flush of pink across his cheek.

A whistle blows for offsides, and Nicklas snaps his eyes to the ice and thinks of nothing.

—

Nicklas makes it through the rest of the game without breaking a leg or thinking anything truly irrevocable.

He draws four more penalties before the linesmen start circling him like sharks. He has to reverse a pass just to keep from hitting one of them.

“Sorry,” the linesman blurts, and Nicklas dodges around him and goes to catch Semin’s rebound off the boards.

—

Nicklas had kind of been hoping that once the news got out, more of the questions would be for Alex.

The reporters track him down anyway, even though he hasn’t gotten any better at this. Being bonded doesn’t make him chatty, it just makes him stuck with a man who never shuts up. It’s not transferable.

What, they want to know, had Alex been thinking after the first goal, after Nicklas had been boarded? Had he been angry?

Nicklas blinks at them. How the hell would he know?

_What were you thinking after the first goal?_ he asks, and across the room Alex stumbles over his English reply.

_Hush_ , Alex thinks, and Nicklas shoots him a glare that Alex doesn’t even have the courtesy to return. Mike is next to Alex, holding up his water bottle as a fake microphone in the scrum.

_They asked,_ Nicklas replies. Greenie dissolves into giggles; water gets everywhere. Reporters laugh. Alex’s eyes flick up to meet Nick’s.

_I said hush, grumpy_ , Alex thinks, entirely unapologetic.

Nicklas schools his face and turns back to the tape recorders. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Mike turn to watch him.

“He won’t say,” he says. “Sorry.”

The reporters laugh with him, now. It is something out of a fairytale, something charming by its mere nature; it is enough that is exists at all, that they get to be here in this historic moment to see what has never been finally come to pass.

—

Some people think soulbonds are a lie, a trick of the mind. Nicklas doesn’t care about them: he didn’t come to the Capitals to make a damn point, even if he did end up bonded to the one person in this league with the most to prove.

Some people think bonds are a loss of freedom, a question of will. Nicklas could ask how they think they know, but it’s academic anyway, when he spent the year of his bonded life clueless and callous, alone and foolish. He was never the trapped one.

He would ask Alex, but he knows better. He knows better than to wonder aloud whether Alex minded, whether he hated Nicklas back. How could he have not? Nicklas is forgiven now, and he may forgive himself, too, one day.

—

Some people don’t bother about soulbonds at all. Some people never give a second thought to what amounts to a dream of a knight in shining armor, to children’s stories and faded daguerrotypes of those who once knew the gift.

Some people have never asked and never cared, and Nicklas wonders what they think of all of this fuss.

—

They get to the hotel in New Jersey later than Nicke would like. The security is heavy even though no one is around them; a guard insists on accompanying Nicklas to his hotel room.

“This is weird,” Mike says out of nowhere in the elevator. He’s between Nicklas and the guard, and he apparently doesn’t care that there’s someone they’ve never met in here with them.

“Yeah,” Nicke says, because there’s manners and then there’s denial.

They still room together. There was some discussion, Nicklas knows, about moving the assignments, about putting Greenie and Sasha Semin somewhere else.

_They want to what?_ Nicklas had asked when Alex had informed him that their fucking sleeping arrangements were under consideration, and Alex had shrugged.

_I told them we’re telepathic, not married_ , Alex had thought, and that had been the last Nicklas had heard of it.

That had been weeks ago, before tonight, before Nicklas had looked at Alex’s hands and wondered what they might be capable of, how they might feel, slipping under his bond-clasp, brushing against —

“After you,” Mike says. The security guard peels out of the elevator and follows them down the hall, and Nicklas has a moment of brief, irrational terror that he’s going to sleep on their fucking hotel-room couch or something.

He just nods when they go in and turns back toward the elevator. Nicklas lets himself hope that no one will be there in the morning.

He takes the bed by the door, like always. Greenie throws his bag on the couch, like always, and Nicklas takes a breath and feels normal for the first time since they landed in Newark. 

“So,” Mike says.

“Yeah?” Nicklas rubs his eyes and sits down on the edge of his bed to take his socks off.

“Were you gonna talk about this?” Mike says sharply. Nicklas twists to look at him; he’s in the bathroom washing his face, like always, like every time they do this, like the whole of last season —

“Talk about what?” Nicklas says. “I’m pretty sure the weird security guy isn’t coming back.”

“The whole fucking telepathy thing?” Mike says. He sits down on his bed across from Nicklas; their feet touch. They always touch when they sit like this. Mike’s not usually quite so visibly furious, though.

“What about — that's what the bond _is_ ,” Nicklas says. He’ll omit the part where he can’t do it right and so Alex gets an annoying bonus window into Nicklas’s scattershot brain, because that’s never been in anyone’s fairytale. Apart from that little detail, Nicklas is fairly certain this is par for the course.

“What?” Greenie says. “Are you fucking serious?”

—

Some people have never asked and never cared before, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care now.

—

Mike makes him prove it, which is a lot more fun and substantially less dystopian than the NHL’s approach.

“Make him text me,” Mike says. He’s already staring at his phone, like Nicklas is going to get Alex to reveal the secrets of eternal youth and a 60-goal season at Nicklas’s behest.

“He texts you constantly,” Nicklas tells him. “That’s not going to show anything.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Make him text me something _good_ ,” he says.

_Greenie thinks your regular texts are stupid and boring_ , Nicklas thinks. Alex is right there, barely twenty feet away on the other side of the wall. Nicke could just lean up against the headboard and yell, probably.

_What?_ Alex thinks. _Fuck texting, me and Sasha Semin are going out. You two coming?_

_No. I don’t know,_ Nicklas thinks. _Text him something, he doesn’t believe in telepathy._

Mike’s phone buzzes.

“Is it any good?” Nicklas asks resignedly. It is almost certainly no good.

Mike holds up the phone. **everyone belive telepathy!!! hahaha))) easy** , it says.

“Uh, sorry,” Nicklas says, but that seems to be enough to satisfy Mike anyway.

—

It is not enough to answer all Mike’s questions, though; not by far. It’s the beginning, not the end, and when Alex and Sasha Semin drag them out to a candy-colored monstrosity of a bar for beer and peanuts and very, very horrible music, Nicklas can feel Greenie’s eyes on him every time he so much as looks at Alex.

Sasha Semin is the same. They're watching them, tracking them, like if they listen hard enough they can hear the whispers of the bond themselves.

—

Nicklas, for his part, spends the evening looking at anything but Alex, focusing on anything but the easy way Alex’s hands draw figures on the bar, anything but the faint sheen of sweat on the bridge of his nose.

Alex’s bond-clasp sits just above the collar of his glossy white T-shirt, winking at Nicklas in the pink and yellow neon of the bar. It’s delicate enough that it clings to his skin when he shifts his shoulders; it’s thin enough that Nicklas can barely make out the links in the darkness.

Nicklas is staring.

_Nicky?_ Alex thinks, the first he’s touched the bond since they left the hotel, and Nicklas startles.

Alex is looking at him, intense and huge even in the crush of people. They take up so much space, the four of them, but it’s Alex who's consuming the air around Nicklas.

_I’m fine_ , Nicklas lies.

Mike yells something in Nicke’s ear and Nicklas turns to face him, away from — away from nothing, nothing: he’s thinking about nothing.

When he glances back at Alex, all he can see is the breadth of his back under the fabric of his shirt, and just a hint of silver on his neck.

Nicklas is staring, and he’s — he’s not thinking about nothing, _fuck_.

“Mike,” Nicklas says, loud in the lull between songs, “can we go?”

“What? Okay,” Greenie says. “Guys!” he shouts past Nicklas. Nicklas can’t make himself catch Alex’s attention, can’t force himself to reach out, not like this.

He takes a breath and tries to — to pull himself inward, to fold up the stupid, stupid thrum of _want_ , but he knows, he fucking _knows_ it’s hopeless —

_Nicky,_ Alex thinks, _what the fuck is going on?_

_Nothing_ , Nicke thinks. _It’s nothing, Alex._

—

They go home; Nicklas makes it home.

Greenie corners him getting onto the plane and Nicke just ducks his head and follows him to the rearmost seats. He doesn’t know where Alex is sitting; it doesn’t matter. It’s not what’s on his mind right now.

—

Ticket sales, Patricia says, are up.

There are signs in English, and signs in Russian. There are questions from the press that hint at something more than a bond, more than friendship, more than would ever be — professional, or allowed. More than would ever be appropriate, and Nicklas shakes his head and thinks about nothing.

—

It’s not that Nicke has never thought about sex around Alex. It’s — he’s only twenty-one, that would be asking a lot. He’s pretty sure he’s thought about guys, even, around Alex, not that he’s going to bring it up to see if Alex remembers, fuck, but anyway that’s not — that’s not the problem.

It’s just that he spends a lot of time with Alex in locker rooms, in clubs and bars and the backs of taxis. He doesn’t look, he wouldn’t, you can’t do that to a teammate even if said teammate can’t listen to your fucking brain. It’s not all right.

He doesn’t look. He spends a lot of time not looking.

—

The trouble is, he has eyes.

Alex has grown into his frame in a way even someone without Nicklas’s particular issues could notice. He’s more confident now, and a little taller and a lot wider and he has a grace to him that was all tentative awkwardness, once upon a time.

He has a habit of biting his lip while he tapes his stick; he has a habit of wearing his T-shirts to death, until they fade and stretch and twist around his waist when he turns. He has a flush that reaches all the way down his chest when he’s drunk, down past the vee of his shirt and up the curve of his neck.

Nicklas doesn’t look; he doesn’t look but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t _see,_ and he can feel the images piling up in his subconscious like the world’s most ill-advised scrapbook. It trickles into Nicklas’s brain when he’s not paying attention, little stories of Alex’s body, of the way he looks at Nicke. It would — it would be nice, if it meant what Nicklas doesn’t let himself think about.

It would be nice if he could stop fucking thinking about it.

It would be fucking nice if Nicklas could keep Alex out of his mind when he’s falling asleep, if he could keep his eyes off Alex when they’re changing after a game. It would be _nice_ if Nicklas could look at anyone else when they’re out at a club, but he can’t.

—

They secure a playoff spot. In the middle of everything, of all this bullshit, they’re in the playoffs.

Alex invites Nicklas to some celebratory dinner with his family, and Nicklas says _yes_ like he didn’t see Alex’s lips in his mind when he was jerking off last night.

—

It’s at a Russian restaurant and it’s Alex’s family. There will either be six hundred people in attendance or five, and Nicklas has no idea what to wear.

“You’re so weird,” Kris says when Nicklas calls him. “Why are you asking me this? Wear the ugliest thing you own and you’ll fit right in.”

“Asshole,” Nicklas says. “It’s his _parents_.”

“Someone taught him to dress like that, Nicke,” Kris says.

“They dress like normal people,” Nicklas says. He’s standing in front of his closet, which is T-shirts, game day suits, and jackets, mostly of the puffy variety. He is not well-equipped for this.

“Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Kris says. “What about that green shirt with the bird on the front? Send me a picture of your closet or something, this is fucking impossible over the phone.”

“It looks the same as the last time you were here,” Nicklas tells him distractedly. Kris’s choice is at least green, which is a nice color on Nicke, but it’s also a broad scoop-neck and sort of casual for dinner with parents.

“Just wear something where you can see your necklace,” Kris suggest. “Blind them with it, and they won’t notice you’re still five and can’t dress yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Nicklas retorts, and puts the T-shirt back on its hanger.

—

He wears a white button-down and leaves it unbuttoned past his collarbones, far enough that the loop of the bond-clasp is visible as it dives down his chest.

It’s absurd. He looks ridiculous. The hostess glances down at least twice whole she’s taking his name, and he wants to get his jacket back from coat check and leave.

_Nicky?_ Alex thinks from somewhere to his left.  _We’re in the back room_.

_Hi,_ Nicklas thinks. _I know, she’s bringing me back_.

They meet in the hallway outside the back room. Alex’s eyes go to Nicklas’s throat and stay there.

Nicklas can’t tell what he’s thinking. Nicklas can’t look away from Alex’s face, can barely stop himself from bringing his hand up to touch the chain where Alex’s eyes are caught on it. He can’t think of anything but Alex reaching out and doing it himself, sliding his finger under the heavy gold, tracing over Nicklas’s skin like he owns him, like his hand belongs there.

Nicklas doesn’t know what Alex is thinking, because Nicklas is the only one here with a fucking _problem_.

—

Nicklas almost makes it to the end of the season. He’s one game from the playoffs, one game from something so serious that maybe it will snap him the fuck out of this.

“You should get laid,” Kris had told him when Nicklas had flatly refused to explain why he was being so goddamned neurotic, really, Nicke. Nicklas had hung up on him.

He probably _should_ get laid, but if there’s anything he’s less prepared for than a fucking crush on Alex Ovechkin, it’s getting laid.

“I’ll wing for you,” Kris had said when Nicklas called him back. “Seriously, twenty-one is too old not to know what you’re doing, little brother.”

Yes, it is. If Nicklas had ever had time to get laid, though, he’d probably have had time to figure out a lot of other things. Who knows: he might have even come up with some fucking self-control.

As it is, he has not.

—

It’s late when they fly home from New York. They have a home game against the Jets and then the season is done, over, finished.

Alex had had a three-point game. Nicklas had assists on both of his goals, but no one had any questions for him in the lockers after the game. It’s back to Alex, now, like it should be; it’s back to Nicklas showering and changing in relative obscurity while Alex tells their story for him.

It’s dark on the plane. Half the guys are asleep. Mike is reading with his overhead light on beside Nicklas, but it's a book about fishing. Nicklas has given up trying to read excerpts over his shoulder.

He’s so close to home, so near the end. He knows how it feels, to be in the running for a prize: it consumes your mind, devours your time. Guys barely see their wives during playoffs. Half of them have weird sex superstitions about it, which they have begun freely discussing in the lockers. 

Nicklas doesn’t have any weird sex superstitions, on account of his lack of ever having had sex, but he’s still counting on the playoffs to eat him alive as much as the next guy. He’s counting on the pace and the dream and the exhaustion to crush every desperate memory he has of the weight of Alex’s hands on his back as they walk off the plane, to free him from the curl of heat in his stomach when Alex strips off his shirt in the lockers. 

He wants to be so tired he can’t imagine kissing Alex. He wants to be so worn-down he doesn’t dream about the press of Alex’s lips on his jaw, about Alex’s tongue in his mouth or his hand on Nicklas’s cock, about how Alex would feel rubbing off against him, twisting in Nicklas’s arms, how —

_Nicky_. 

Nicklas’s breath stops in his lungs, and his heart stops in his chest. Oh, fuck.

_Stop,_ Alex thinks from five rows behind him, not asleep at all. _Stop._


	4. Chapter 4

Sasha can feel it when people board Nicky. He can feel the surprise and the shock and the way Nicky’s world shifts and realigns in an instant. 

They want to fuck with him, with _them_ , because they don’t know what they’re dealing with. The Devils and everyone else have a bead on Nicky from the start of their first game back with the bond public. They’re ready to rumble, read to disrupt the flow, like anyone can disrupt Nicklas Backstrom when he has the puck in hand. People come at him with shoulders and sticks and microphones, ready to bring him down because they want to see where they can get if they get past him, like Nicky isn’t a wall unto himself. People try to reach Sasha through Nicky, because they are under the ludicrous impression that Nicklas can be gotten through at all, and that Nicklas is not a destination, a star on his own.

They can come at him all they want: Nicky can handle himself.

—

Sasha reserves the right to be angry about it, of course.

_These pieces of shit_ , Sasha thinks as he skates up to Nicky on the bench. The Devils are down 1-0 because they’re stupid and short-sighted. Nicky’s lip is busted. He doesn’t look very bothered.

_If you weren’t so good, this would be a lot easier for both of us,_ Nicky thinks, and Sasha is surprised anew by the warmth of it, by the edge of wickedness that his words carry now.

_You love it,_ Sasha thinks.

—

Love is — love is hard to quantify. 

Well, no. Love is everywhere is Sasha’s life, and it’s usually pretty easy to nail down. He’s never doubted that his parents loved him, or his girlfriend in juniors, or second-guessed the way Misho calls sometimes to check in on him after a West coast game, even though it’s ungodly late.

Sasha had put Nicky’s bond-clasp back on him when it was finally repaired, had hooked the ends of the chain together against the pale, pale skin of his neck and felt Nicky’s heart pound, but he wouldn’t call it love.

He can’t, is the thing. How could he? He knows better, he knows how long he’s waited and he _knows_ how new everything feels to Nicky and how invasive Sasha’s very presence is to him, and he can’t, he cannot under any circumstances let himself call it _love_.

—

They play New Jersey and win. They play Anaheim and win. They play Detroit and win. Nicklas looks over in the lockers just in time to catch Sasha pulling his shirt over his head, and all Sasha can see, for one devastating moment, is his own mouth on Nicky’s stomach, his own back flexing as he curves over Nicklas’s body.

Sasha’s dick gets hard so fast his head spins, right as Nicky’s fantasies split in half and he spills cold, nauseating shame across the room.

—

They make the playoffs, and Sasha’s parents come in from Russia to help him get ready. Some guys have bizarre habits and special restrictions on underwear; Sasha has a mama who completely takes over his diet and training regimen for the entire postseason.

“We’re going out,” his mama tells him the day after they get in. “Who is coming? Misha’s girlfriend is free on Friday and Saturday. When does Nicklas want to go?”

Nicky blinks rapidly when Sasha asks him, each flicker of his eyelashes accompanied by a wave of terror.

_They’re going to be fine,_ Sasha thinks. _Just show up an eat as much as you can, that’s all they want_.

_Okay,_ Nicklas thinks, _great_ , and then he shows up just as freaked out and on edge as he was when Sasha asked him, spilling into the back room all the way from the foyer.

_Nicky? We’re in the back room_ , Sasha thinks, even though Nicky probably knows. He gets up to go and find him.

Nicklas is dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt, his hair horribly slicked-back and combed flat, all the gel in the world still unable to control the curled ends as they brush his collar. His collar, which is gaping open in what Sasha would think was a clumsy imitation of Sasha himself if Nicklas was laughing, but he’s not. He’s tense and concerned and he’s hopeful and he definitely, definitely did this on purpose. He did this for Sasha, in whatever way Nicky thought that Sasha might like it.

Sasha is staring again.

Nicklas wants to touch his collar; he wants to touch his necklace. He thinks of Sasha putting his fingers on his skin, dragging them beneath the chain until Nicklas is shivering. He thinks about Sasha _owning_ him.

Sasha thinks of cold showers and season-ending injuries and the fact that he has to go into the fucking dining room and sit down next to his _mother_ , who is as perceptive as she is judgmental, and he makes himself break his gaze away.

—

It’s torture. It’s torture, not worse than last year, not worse than loneliness but a different kind of terrible.

It could be amazing. It would be something like a gift, if Nicky didn’t fucking hate it so much.

It would be fun, if Sasha could tease him with it. It would be fucking fantastic if Sasha really could step in behind him and put his mouth against Nicky’s ear to ask him a question; Sasha would give a thousand fucking dollars to be able to run his hand up Nicky’s thigh under the table during a presser, a million to be able to catch Nicky in an empty hallway and sneak his palm under Nicky’s shirt and slip his fingertips into Nicky’s waistband, to make him, fuck, make him whine —

It’s in vivid fucking color, live and breathing in Sasha’s brain, the way Nicky’s stomach would shudder under his hand, the way Nicky would give it up for him, how bad he fucking wants it, shit, _shit_.

It’s in and out, like a strobe light, all the time. Nicklas looks at Sasha in the car to the Dulles airport and his eyes catch on the muscle of Sasha’s neck. Nicklas looks at Sasha in a bar in New Jersey and thinks about Sasha pinning him against the dark wood wall and kissing him until he’s twisting in Sasha's arms. Sasha can’t push it out of his brain, can’t get away from it, can’t _do_ anything. He has no fucking defense against this, against the blatant want in Nicky’s eyes and the fucking porn in his head.

Then, in a heartbeat, it’s crushed up like an empty soda can, and Nicky’s dousing the room in misery like he’s trying to wash away the memory of anything else.

It could be amazing, but it’s only Sasha who thinks that.

Nicky fights it, hates it, hides it, and Sasha closes his eyes and bites his tongue and hopes to God that it stops.

—

They’re playing good hockey. They’re playing fucking spectacular hockey and that’s good, thank God for that. Sasha has, if nothing else, that.

Everyone else seems pretty okay with the way things have settled out. It helps that they’re on the home stretch, pushing through until the playoffs, and everyone’s too exhausted to see Nicky silently wrecking himself in his stall, or to notice the tension in Sasha’s shoulders.

He just wants to go back to his hotel room and not have to think about it. He wants to know, for once in his goddamned life, what Nicky fucking _wants,_ and then be able to give it to him. 

It’s worse, really, than last year. It’s gotten to the point that Sasha, he just — at least when Nicky hated him, Nicky fucking _wanted_ something. He wanted Sasha to leave him the fuck alone, and Sasha could do that. It was excruciating and lonely and futile and Sasha felt like a bottle with all the water poured out, but at least he was fucking doing something.

He can’t do anything now.

Sometimes it’s normal again. Sometimes Nick catches Sasha’s eye from across the room and thinks, _Oh, hello,_ and all manner of Sasha Things, and it feels like a hug and a wink all at once and Sasha wants fucking to stop time.

Sometimes Sasha lies awake with his head four feet away from Nicky’s through the thin wood of their hotel room walls and listens to Nicky get off thinking about him, and he just wishes he could _stop_.

It’s — it’s not like he’s never caught bits of Nicky’s sex thoughts: he can see inside his brain, it’s inevitable. He was fine with that. He was tolerating that.

That, he could survive.

Sasha clenches his teeth and crushes his eyes closed and in Nicky’s mind he — shit, he’s practically choking on Nicky’s cock, on his knees on the soft carpet as Nicklas digs his fingers into the blankets and tries desperately not to come. Nicky’s whole body is lighting up, his cock jerking in Sasha’s mouth every time Sasha goes down, every time he pulls back and sucks at the head of Nicky’s dick.

Oh God, oh fuck, Nicky’s so close, he’s so fucking close, Sasha’s mouth is hot and tight and there’s sweat in Nicklas’s eyes and his balls are drawing up, aching and heavy and he’s, he’s, oh, _fuck_ , yes — 

Sasha has to press his face into the pillow and twist his hips away from the bed to keep from making a noise, to keep from fucking down into the sheets and coming when Nicky does.

Nicky takes a deep, shuddering breath, and there, fuck, there it goes.

There it goes, as Sasha is bathed in the chill of Nicky’s self-loathing, dropped into the deep pool of disgust. It goes; it is gone, and now Sasha cannot help but know just exactly how much Nicky wishes he could stop, how much Nicky wishes he’d never thought of Sasha at all.

Sasha lies in bed and lets it wash over him until his dick goes soft. He’s never jerked off thinking about Nicky, no matter how much — no matter how easy it would be, because of _this:_ because he couldn’t miss how much Nicky hates this even if he was trying. He stopped trying a long time ago.

Nicky falls asleep, and it’s finally quiet.

—

It’s late when they fly home from New York.

Sasha makes a beeline for the back and elbows his way into an aisle seat next to Poti. He’s keyed up and buzzing. He’s on edge for no reason but hockey, sharp and bright and alive just because they’re _here_ , they’re in the playoffs and he fucking loves it. Fuck the Jets, who are terrible, and fuck the haters, as they say in America. Sasha had a three point game, better than money, better than sex, and the Capitals are going to the playoffs.

Nicky loads into his seat and feels tired, and Sasha just shuts it out as best he can and enjoys the moment while he has it.

His phone lights up, from Geno of all people — **Congratulations!! We made it nobody’s legs fell off ))** it reads in Russian, familiar and Cyrillic and pressure-free in this space before the games _really_ begin.

**Gonna show you how we do it in the semifinals** , Sasha sends back.

Sasha slings his bag into the overhead and catches a water bottle from John. He buckles his seatbelt and flips his phone in his hand until it vibrates again.

**hahah not going easy on you** , it reads. **Or your boy**

**:ppp You’re gonna have to watch out for him** , Sasha texts. God knows how Nicky feels about Sasha right now, but Nicklas can fucking take Geno any day.

Nicky can handle himself.

—

Everyone drops off to sleep as the wheels go up. They’re going to need it. Sasha is too turned up to drift off, but he didn’t bring a book and his phone is nearly dead and he’s basically resigned to drumming his fingers on the tray table and stretching his neck and shoulders out in his seat.

“Alex, fuckin’,” Poti mumbles sleepily when Sasha twists and cracks his back all up in his personal space.

“Sorry, sorry,” Sasha tells him.

Fuck, he’s bored, and Nicky’s up there thinking about something vague and exhausted, thinking about he’s ready to be done, about how he can’t wait to be so tired he’s not —

Jesus fucking _God_ , Sasha thinks.

Can they not just — can they not just _get over it_ , like people do? Can Nicky not figure this out and stop twisting Sasha around his finger, stop winding Sasha up and pushing him away, like the worst cocktease in the universe, except that it isn’t _Sasha_ who’s having the worse time here. Sasha’s not the one distracted and miserable, the one making himself sick thinking about shit he doesn’t even want.

Sasha’s having a terrible, terrible time, but he’s not suffering the most out of the two of them. At least he actually wants Nicky. He wants what he can’t have, but at least he fucking _wants_ it.

If some asshole checked Nicky hard enough to make him feel this bad, Sasha would drop gloves and punch them in the face. If someone yanked Nicky around and played him and made him hurt like this, ache like this, Sasha would have had _words_ with them by now.

If Nicky could have let him, Sasha would have fucking addressed this, but he can’t smack Nicky in the head for being shitty to himself.

Five rows in front of him, Nicky is praying for the dawn of a time when he doesn’t have to want Sasha, for a time when hockey eclipses everything else. All Nicky wants is to be out from under, to get to a place where he’s too worn down to even get it up, to get away from the warmth that’s sliding though him even now at the thought of Sasha’s hands on him.

All Nicky wants is to not want it: he wants to _not_ want Sasha’s mouth on his, to not want Sasha to grind up against him, hot and hard and needy himself, rolling their hips together as Nicky lights up, as Nicky’s blood goes hot and his dick throbs in his sweats, and all Sasha wants is for this to fucking _stop._

_—_

God, this is going to be a disaster.

_Nicky_ , he thinks. _Stop._

_—_

Nicklas’s brain shuts down like throwing a fucking breaker, and the plane is suddenly filled with nothing but horror.

Shit. Fine. Well.

_Stop,_ Sasha thinks again, as kindly as he can.

Poti is asleep. Everyone is sleeping, because they’re all as tired as Nicky is, as tired as Sasha will be when the plane finally touches back down to earth. Everyone is dreaming, and Sasha is here, awake, in an enclosed space thirty thousand feet above the ground that’s filling with agony like exhaust fumes in a garage.

_Nicky,_ Sasha thinks after a moment, _are you o—_ and Nicky throws up a wall of shivering, terrified anger, like a knife through Sasha’s brain.

Everyone is passed the fuck out and Sasha’s up in the air, unwanted and unable to fix anything, and it all feels so terribly, terribly familiar.

There’s the noise of movement up in Nicky’s row. Sasha pulls his hoodie up over his head and slumps down in his seat. He can’t sleep through Nicky feeling like this, but he can close his eyes and just pretend.

All of his three-point buzz is gone. He would trade… he would trade a lot, if he could change the way this had played out.

He brings his fingers up to his throat and rubs the pads over the smooth silver clasp. Nicklas is right there, fucking killing himself. Sasha could break into his mental space if he wanted to, but this isn’t about what Sasha can do with their bond so much as what Nicky can’t.

Greenie comes down the aisle, and Sasha shifts his left knee inward to let him go past to the bathroom.

“Alex,” Greenie says softly. His hand lands on Sasha’s armrest and his face drops to lock eyes with Sasha and Sasha is — maybe going to be murdered, right here in this airplane.

Um. Shit.

“Hi,” Sasha says. “Can I help you? Bathroom back there.” He pushes the hoodie back and puts his hands in his lap; Mike’s eyes track the descent of his fingers from his necklace.

“Your new seat’s up front there,” Greenie says, low and furious.

“He don’t want me to —”

“Stand up,” Greenie snaps.

Sasha unbuckles his seatbelt, but this isn’t actually what he should be doing. It’s not like he can’t talk to Nicky from back here. It’s not like there’s anything he can fucking say anyway.

He doesn’t need to go up there and say words with his mouth. That’s not going to help anything.

“I’m not what make him mad,” Sasha says in a final plea for reason.

It’s dark, so he still can’t be sure that Mike is not going to kill him with his bare hands while Poti naps complacently. Sasha would like to think that he could take Mike in a fair fight, but this, this isn’t going to be fair.

“ _Mad?_ You fuckup,” Greenie says, stepping back. “He’s not mad, he’s _crying_.”

Great. Fuck. No wonder Greenie is back here cursing at Sasha; God.

“Bathroom’s back there, by the way, if you need to grab some tissues,” Mike says.

“I don’t make him cry,” Sasha says. He stands up. This is futile to the extreme. “He’s just mad, mad at self, I don’t know.”

“There’s no one else in his head,” Mike says. “Maybe you didn’t break it, but you fucking bought it, right?”

“Yeah,” Sasha says, heading up the aisle.

Sasha didn’t break Nicky, but he sure as hell bought in. He is sold — signed, sealed, delivered, and he has been from the start. It’s Nicklas that got ripped off.

—

Nicky has his face pressed against the window when Sasha slides into the seat beside him. His hair is curling soft around his ears and the collar of his sweater is pulled up around his neck.

“Hi,” Sasha says quietly.

This is awful. This is — Sasha can pretend all he wants, but to be here, to be this close to Nicklas while he silently leaks agony, is fucking horrible.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha says.

Nicky sniffles.

_That’s gross_ , Sasha thinks, as gently as he can. _You’re gross_.

Nicklas turns and wipes at his cheeks, and oh, God, Sasha thought he’d been through the worst of his life already, but he would happily die if he never had to see this again.

“What are you sorry about?” Nicky asks quietly. His voice is hoarse, and his face is red. His eyelashes are wet, spikes of dark gold in the dim overhead lighting. The dip of his collar just, _just_ covers the thick strand of his necklace where it loops down his chest.

Sasha would die for a lot of things, when he looks at Nicklas like this.

“Sorry you hate this so much,” Sasha whispers. “Sorry you so unhappy.”

“I’m sorry you have to hear it,” Nicky says. He has his game face on. He is trying to be fine.

God, Sasha wants to — to _touch_ , to get the strands of hair off Nicky’s forehead and the tears off his jaw.

“Yeah, have to hear you be sad,” Sasha says, teasing. “Fucking sucks, you gonna stop?”

Nicklas can’t, of course. He can’t stay out of Sasha’s head. If he had only bonded to someone he didn’t want to get the fuck away from half the time, maybe that would be okay, but he’s not. He’s not bonded to — Sasha can’t even imagine anyone he knows being bonded to Nicky without wanting to throw them off a cliff, so never mind the examples. If only, is the point.

_I’m — I’m sorry for the rest of it, too_ , Nicky thinks, meeting Sasha’s eyes.

He looks like he’s trying to be tough. He feels like he’s holding his breath.

Nicky is braver than Sasha, most of the time. Most of the time, he’s the one walking around without the option of privacy, without the luxury of his own thoughts, and he’s the one who bought Sasha a clasp anyway. He’s the one who apologized out of nowhere in the locker room, back when he didn’t even know Sasha could hear him, and he’s the one who’s sorry now.

Nicky is tough as hell most of the time, but sometimes: sometimes it’s on Sasha.

_Oh, no, don’t be sorry for that_ , Sasha thinks warmly, going for fucking broke. _I promise you, the rest of it is pretty damn good_.

Nicky blinks. A curl falls over his cheek and sticks the moisture on his skin.

That was a bad idea, Sasha thinks to himself.

That was — the nuances of, of saying _I don’t mind creeping around in your brain listening to you get off_ — fuck, no, that was very unwise.

Sasha clenches his teeth and waits. Telepathy has its downsides, not least of which is the part where you can’t really misspeak.

Nicky’s brain is a fucking whirlpool. His mouth falls slightly open, and then he licks his lips and closes it and Sasha’s not, he’s not staring but he’s, he’s been doing a fairly bad job of not staring for fucking months now.

He can feel — fuck, he can feel Nicky’s thoughts coalescing. The misery is going fast and now it’s just Sasha Things, Sasha Things but with one hell of a new edge.

Nicky’s eyes drop to Sasha’s mouth, deliberate and hot, and Sasha could drown in the way Nicklas wants him.

_Nicky,_ he thinks. _You want it, you’ve got it._

—

Sasha has kissed plenty of people. It’s easy; it’s so easy. There’s nothing to it.

He can’t move.

He can’t hear the plane over his own heartbeat. Fuck.

Nicklas’s whole body jumps with the rush of his indrawn breath. Oh, God. Hell, Sasha thought it was bad when the plane was full of misery. He can’t sit here and listen to Nicky _want_ like this, not when Sasha can — not when he can finally fucking _do_ something.

Sasha pushes the armrest between them up and out of the way and takes Nicky’s face in his hands and kisses him, and it feels like a bomb going off.

—

The reality of it is: they are in a small commercial airplane filled with their sleeping teammates. The reality of it is that Sasha’s nose bumps into Nicky’s and they take a second to get their bearings; the reality is that no one else’s air changed to smoke in the two seconds after Sasha opened his mouth and slid his tongue into Nicky’s. No one else can feel the thickness of Nicklas’s desire in their lungs, and no one else can feel the fucking _hunger_ in him and Sasha is so very incredibly fucked.

The reality is that Sasha is about thirty seconds of kissing Nicky in a dark, cramped airplane seat from acting out any one of Nicky’s fantasies, and he should really stop.

—

Sasha pushes his hand under Nicky’s shirt and traces the curve of his stomach, the bumps of his ribs under his smooth, warm skin, and Nicky sucks in a breath against Sasha’s mouth and — 

It’s all the times Sasha’s bitten his lip and closed his eyes and tried not to feel it when Nicky thinks about Sasha’s mouth on him, all the times he’s tried not to let it get to him when Nicky comes on the other side of a meaningless hotel room wall.

Jesus, he’s so screwed.

Sasha rubs his palm over Nicky’s chest. Fuck; his fingers catch on the bond-clasp and then he circles his thumb over Nicky’s nipple and it goes through — it goes through Nicklas, it goes through Nicky like wildfire and Sasha’s cock fucking _jerks_ , oh. Oh God.

He can’t stop. He doesn’t want to stop. Nicky’s digging his fingers into the far armrest while Sasha kisses down his neck and it’s, it’s so fucking much, all the electricity and desperation of Nicky’s blood running hot, of Nicky twisting in Sasha’s arms, wanting, burning, taking Sasha down with him.

Nicky’s thoughts are in blessed disarray; Sasha is in no state to handle coherent fantasies. He bring his free hand down from Nicky’s shoulder to his stomach, teases his fingers over Nicklas’s waistband and then Nicky’s whole body goes taut and Sasha nearly comes in his pants.

It’s — he can _feel_ how hard Nicky is, the heavy throb of his dick and the itchy, anxious need that’s coiling in his belly, the way Nicky would shake in his arms if Sasha dipped his hand just a little lower — the way Nicky would fuck his hips forward, the way Nicklas is barely stopping himself now. 

It’s a little too much for Sasha’s brain. It’s a little too much for all of his nervous system, honestly.

Nicky shifts under him, and Sasha, oh God, Sasha needs to stop before he embarrasses himself.

He’s going to to be the worst lay in the fucking universe, he thinks to himself. Shit.

_Fuck, Nicky_ , he thinks. He pulls his hands back and rests his forehead on Nicklas’s collarbone.

_Are you okay?_ Nicky thinks.

_Fine,_ Sasha thinks. He looks up until he can see Nicky’s face. _You’re killing me, but I’m fine._

_What?_ Nicky thinks.

He’s so turned on, Nicky is: he’s so fucking hot in every sense of the word, and Christ, he should know.

Sasha is terrible at getting through his own natural walls; he’s not sure where to start or what works, but he pushes and pushes inside his own head until he can open up just a crack, until Nicky’s eyes go dark as sin. Fuck.

Nicky swallows, a long, slow, deliberate movement. Sasha knows exactly how he fucking feels.

_Oh,_ Nicky thinks, just that, but he likes this.

Sasha can’t keep his mind open for long, and there’s a subtle shift in Nicky’s shoulders when Sasha folds back into himself.

_You’ve been fucking torturing me,_ Sasha thinks, smiling. _Thanks for that_.

Nicky smiles back, a sly, shy, wicked curve. Sasha suddenly feels all thirty thousand feet between him and the ground.

_Sorry,_ Nicky thinks, but, oh, he really, really isn’t.

—

Sasha goes back to his own seat, because he can’t sit here and listen to the things in Nicky’s head. They have almost an hour left in the flight; he has to make it through an _hour_ of this.

Mike goes up to the front and sits next to Nicklas while Nicky — _fuck_ , he’s got a dirty mind.

Sasha thought he might be the one who had the upper hand here: Sasha thought he might be the one who knew what he was doing.

He does not know shit.

He’s sweating by the time they start to descend. His dick is _aching_. He’s genuinely fucking regretful that he missed his chance to jerk off in the tiny shitty airplane bathroom, because Nicklas, _Nicky_ , Jesus fucking Christ.

Nicky’s cheek is leaning against the cool plastic of the cabin wall. He’s hard, too; he’s not touching himself. His mouth is open, and Sasha can feel the drag of stale airplane air over his lips every time he breathes, can feel just exactly how badly Nicky wants Sasha’s dick in his mouth. Nicklas licks his lips and Sasha pinches his own thigh, hard.

Nicky’s mouth is wet and empty and he, he wants everything: he wants the thick length of Sasha’s cock pushing against his soft palate, wants to choke on it, wants to suck Sasha _forever_ , in excruciating, vivid, pornographic detail and it’s — Sasha, he can’t —

Nicky slips his thumb into his mouth and tongues the pad of it and Sasha spreads his legs and tries not to shove his hand into his pants. His boxers are damp with sweat and precome. It’s still dark; he could. Oh, fuck, please.

_Please, please,_ Sasha thinks. _Nicky, holy shit, please_.

There’s a jolt in Nicky’s mind, and then he doubles down, draws his teeth up the side of his thumb and _wants_.

He wants Sasha’s hands in his hair. He wants to feel Sasha’s cock flex in his mouth. He wants to rub off against the covers as Sasha whimpers into the pillow and tries not to come, tries desperately, helplessly to make it last.

_Fuck, yes,_ Sasha thinks. Holy shit. He’s never in his life had a fucking blowjob as good as what Nicky’s doing to him now.

Nicky thinks Sasha Things at him, steeped in lust. Nicky’s heart is pounding in his chest. Nicky’s hips twist and Sasha can feel the pressure of the fabric of Nicky’s fly like it’s a hand on his own cock.

He doesn’t want to think about Nicky’s fingers on his own fly. He can’t; he can’t.

_If I touch my dick,_ Sasha thinks, _I’m gonna come_. _Fuck, fuck, Nicky, if you touch — if you —_

They’re landing. They’re losing altitude fast. Mike is still asleep in the periphery of Nicky’s mind. Poti is passed out. People are starting to rustle around in the seats far to the front.

Nicky’s free hand slides up his leg and _over_ and he pushes down, grinding his cock against his palm. In his mind, Sasha is begging, sobbing out his name. In his, in his mind — Sasha's, Sasha —

Sasha shoves his knuckles into his mouth and comes in his fucking boxers in a long, hot rush.

It's gross; it's amazing. God, it feels good.

_Fuuuuck_ , he manages after a moment. _Oh, fuck, Nicky._

—

The plane hits the ground and bounces, once, and around them their teammates come to life.

—

There’s — Sasha has a lot on his mind. He can’t move until they taxi off the tarmac and then he’s paranoid that his bag is going to slip and give his teammates a lot more information than they want.

More important than any of that, though: more important than anything else, Nicky hasn’t come.

Sasha bolts for the airplane bathroom as soon as he has his bag out of the overhead, and if anyone looks at him funny, he’s moving too fast to notice. The toilets are too small to do anything but get his boxers off and into the trash can. It’s probably up there on the list of foul things that have been dumped in there, but it’s a trash bag. No one’s opening it.

By the time he’s out, Nicky’s moving forward and off the plane. It feels empty in the cabin, like dry air and stale snacks. Nicky’s leaving too fast to catch anything but tension, and Sasha doesn’t think it’s the good kind anymore.

_Nicklas,_ Sasha thinks sharply.

_What?_ Nicky thinks. _I’m going to bag claim._

_No shit?_ Sasha thinks.

“Hey,” Greenie says, falling into step with him.

“Hi,” Sasha says.

_Shut up,_ Nicky thinks.

_I can’t, you broke me,_ Sasha thinks. _I’m never leaving you alone now._

_Fair’s fair, I guess_ , Nicky thinks, and Sasha has no time right now for introspection. Greenie throws him a look of speculative annoyance and shoulders his way beside Sasha to squeeze out the door in front of him.

_Nothing about what you just did to me is fair,_ Sasha thinks. He might actually be broken. That was definitely the best sex of his life, and he came in his boxers on a fucking airplane and didn’t even get his partner off. “What?” he asks Mike.

“Is he okay?” Greenie says.

“Yeah,” Sasha says.

_Okay_ , Nicky thinks, accompanied by a faint air of embarrassment. He’s off the jetway and into the hall, the gold of his hair bobbing in the crowd as they all stream toward the exit.

_Don’t back out on me now_ , Sasha thinks. _I was making plans for you_.

Thirty yards in front of him, Nicky shivers.

They need to make it out of this airport, Sasha tells himself. Home first. He can do this.

“That’s it?” Greenie says. “‘Yeah’?”

“What I say?” Sasha says, pulling his eyes away from Nicky’s figure in the distance. “He says okay, I think okay. He’s okay.”

_You have plans for me?_ Nicky asks, a little bit hesitant and a little bit worried but so, so —

“He _says_ he’s okay?” Mike snaps.

Nicky _wants_. Sasha can feel him from here; it’s a buzz like alcohol, like staying awake all night. Sasha’s lungs feel hot with it. His pulse is suddenly thrumming under his skin.

He’s so screwed.

_Home,_ Sasha thinks. _With me._

Nicky sucks in a breath. Sasha wants to skip everything, skip to touching him again, to kissing him until he’s dying for it. Sasha wants to push him into an airport bathroom and suck him off in a stall; he wants to close the fucking terminal and throw everyone out and finally, finally give Nicky what he wants.

“Hello?” Greenie barks. “ _Alex_.”

“What?” Sasha says, from very far away.


	5. Chapter 5

_Home,_ Alex said. _With me._

Nicklas picks up his bag from the belt and tries to breathe.

He knows where Alex lives. He knows the general layout by heart and he knows that Alex will get his bags off the carousel and find them a taxi without Nicklas having to do anything, if Nicklas moves too slowly. He knows Alex’s habits, and Alex’s little mannerisms and the color of the pillows on Alex’s couch and the glaze on the plates in his kitchen, because he _has_ been looking. He has never not noticed Alex.

He stands in a daze for a moment too long, and Alex is there at his elbow with his hockey bag, hustling him toward the exit. Greenie is going to murder Nicklas tomorrow. He’s going to call him five hundred times.

Nicklas looks up and Alex is there, _right_ there, terribly present and overwhelmingly beautiful in his angular, powerful way, and Nicklas gets lost in the shape of his mouth as it speaks to the man at the taxi stand, lost in the thought of how it had felt, kissing the breath out of him, kissing Nicke until he couldn’t think, couldn’t hold himself together for a scant hour of flight time, couldn’t pull himself out of his own fantasies long enough to even get them home, which is just like Nicklas, just —

Alex cuts off his thoughts by shoving him into the backseat of a Chevy Suburban and slamming the door behind them. Nicklas is all tangled up in him, pulling his legs to his own side of the seat and fumbling for his buckle.

 _Sorry, sorry,_ he thinks as the driver gets in and pulls away from the curb.

 _Ha ha,_ Alex thinks, heavy with fondness. _The hell you are._

 _Hey,_ Nicklas thinks. He frowns, briefly, but as pathetically sappy as it sounds, looking at Alex’s face is too much to maintain any semblance of argumentativeness. Alex’s mouth twists in a smile and Nicklas wants to reach out and drag his finger over Alex’s lips, pull them open and feel Alex’s tongue against his skin.

He’s breathing hard again. Fuck.

 _Like I said_ , Alex thinks. _You think I don’t know what you’re doing?_

Nicklas isn’t doing anything, is the thing. Nicke isn’t doing anything but sit there and _want_ , so badly, to have Alex’s hands back on him, to have Alex’s mouth any way he can get it.

He’s been doing that for months.

 _Yeah_ , Alex thinks. _Months, Nicky._

Nicklas jerks his gaze up from where he’s been staring at Alex’s mouth. Alex is smiling with his whole face, his eyes glittering with intention and the devil. Alex looks down at Nicklas’s throat, where the collar of his shirt covers the bond-clasp completely.

 _It looks so good on you,_ Alex thinks, so drenched in lust that it feels nearly predatory.

Nicklas closes his eyes. The necklace is heavy on his skin, warm like Alex’s fingers were an hour ago, and Nicke imagines it’s Alex with his hand on Nicklas’s chest, pressing his fingertip to the ridge of Nicke’s collarbone.

 _Every time I see it, it looks better_ , Alex thinks. _It’s always there, always on you._

It is; Nicklas is used to it, but he feels it anyway. It pools on his sternum when he’s lying down and it leaves droplets of water on his neck when he’s just showered, and when he gets tired on long bus rides he reaches up and rolls it between his fingers and thinks about —

 _I know,_ Alex thinks. _I know what you think._

Nicklas bites his lip and lets the tone of Alex’s thoughts drown him. Alex knows; he knows. He’s not angry.

 _You think about me_ , Alex thinks. _You think about me, and God, it drives me insane._

Nicke has no idea where they are in terms of getting the hell home. He’s been hard since the beginning of time, and he wants nothing more than to be out of this car.

 _You think about how I want to kiss you_ , Alex thinks, and well, no, that’s not strictly what Nicklas has — _You think about how I want to touch you, and how badly I want you. You think about how badly I want to make you come._

Nicklas rubs his damp hands against his jeans and prays he can at least keep himself together for the rest of the drive. He wants Alex to ignore the driver and come over there and kiss him; he wants to feel Alex’s hand on his stomach again, except he’s worried that that’s all it would take right now. He’s not coming in his pants.

 _You’d deserve it,_ Alex thinks, not meanly.

 _I know,_ Nicklas thinks. He’d done that, he’d done _that_ , gotten Alex off, and it’s almost enough to make him feel like he knows how to do this.

He’ll figure it out; he doesn’t really know what to do with another person, but he’s a fast learner. He doesn’t know how to suck cock or give a hand job or, fuck, _anything_ , but he knows what he _wants_ to do and it all comes down to feeling Alex underneath him, feeling Alex hard against him, feeling Alex’s breath on his skin.

He wants to feel Alex’s mouth on him, anywhere. Alex probably knows what he’s doing; Alex can probably show him how to, how to suck him off, how to take his fingers, how to make it feel good.

Nicklas shudders and shifts his knees apart. Fuck, Alex would know how to touch him, how to — Nicklas can almost feel the damp brush of Alex’s lips on his stomach, the hot pressure of Alex’s fingers on, _inside_ him, oh God, he’s never, he doesn’t know if it would really feel that good but he’d be willing to find to out.

He would try that, for Alex.

 _You think you have to do anything to get me?_ Alex thinks, incredulous. _You think I wouldn’t bend over for you?_

Nicklas’s eyes fly open. They’re slowing down, crunching up Alex’s driveway. He’s suddenly blinded by the image of Alex naked, laid out and shaking under Nicklas while Nicklas slides his fingers into him. In Nicke’s mind it’s so, so good: it’s making Alex lose his mind, making Alex sob into the pillow, on the verge of coming just from this.

 _Oh shit,_ Alex thinks from beside him. _Nicky._

In his mind, Alex tightens around his fingers and Nicklas thrusts in harder, and Alex makes a noise like a scream.

 _Oh, God, oh God, you can’t_ , Alex thinks, _I can’t, oh fuck —_

The car stops.

Alex is fucking sweating. His cheekbones are shining in the glare from the front porch lights; Nicklas watches as he presses his lips together and then runs his tongue over them. Nicke can see his chest trembling as he breathes out.

 _Inside_ , Alex thinks, raw and desperate, and Nicklas scrambles to get out of his seat belt.

—

Nicklas manages to extract enough money from his wallet to pay the driver without ripping him off or seeming insane, and Alex has recovered adequately to collect their bags.

Alex leads as they go up to the door; the broad expanse of his back is comforting in its familiarity, a slab of muscle and bone.

He has never not noticed Alex; he has never missed him, though Nicklas sure as hell missed the point for a while there. Alex has existed in Nicklas’s life with a constancy that’s swung between insufferable and foundational; he’s always been there first. Nicke has caught a clue, but it’s always taken him a little longer than it should have.

Alex opens the door and Nicklas follows him in. It looks the same as it ever has. There’s always Russian magazines on the table and empty Gatorade bottles in the sink, not two feet —

 _Two feet from the trash can_ , Alex thinks. _Really, Nicky? You want to clean the kitchen? Now?_

 _No, maybe not,_ Nicklas thinks, smiling at his back. He’s done that before. _Can I try something else tonight?_

Alex turns to face him when they reach the door of his bedroom, and it’s ridiculous that it’s taken Nicklas this long to figure it out, to figure him out. How could he not have known? How did he ever think Alex was hard to get, hard to understand, that is was hard to know what he wanted, when all it’s ever taken is Nicklas paying a moment of attention?

 _I’m too mysterious,_ Alex thinks fondly. _Shrouded in secrecy. You never had a chance._

 _I’m sorry,_ Nicklas thinks, for the tenth time, for the hundredth time, for the last time.

Alex kisses him instead of answering.

Alex’s bedroom is familiar. Alex’s hands are familiar, from the rink, from the airplane. His shoulders are familiar, curved over Nicklas in a shaped they’re never made before; his mouth is familiar, pressed up underneath Nicke’s jaw, trailing down his neck.

Nicklas is going to die. It feels like fire; it feels like his body is a thousand degrees, laying fully dressed on Alex’s bed going completely out of his mind.

Alex pushes his hands under Nicke’s shirt and strips it off over his head in one motion, whip-fast, and throws it across the room.

Nicklas is going to _die_. Alex kisses farther down his neck until he’s at his chest, his mouth meeting his fingertips at Nicke’s sternum. Oh, God, it’s — Nicklas has thought about this, but he never thought about _this,_ never thought about the heat of Alex’s lips an inch away from his nipple, Alex’s fingers digging into his side like this. His dick is so, so fucking hard; Alex is so heavy on top of him and Nicklas doesn’t care what they end up doing but they need to do it soon or he’s going to shove his hand in his pants and get himself off.

Alex bites down, gently, and it feels like touching an electric socket.

“Hnnh,” Nicklas manages, “fuck, _ah_ ,” twisting under Alex but he’s not sure if he needs more or less, more of — Alex leans in and pushes his leg between Nicklas’s and slides his mouth to the left and Nicklas throws his head back and stops thinking thoughts.

Christ, Alex’s tongue on his nipple feels like, feels like he’s sucking Nicke’s _cock_ , hot and sharp. Nicklas’s hips rock up against Alex’s thigh and it’s the best thing he’s ever felt, better than jerking off, better than touching himself _anywhere_ , and oh, _oh_ , he’s going to come, oh _shit_ , he’s going to come.

 _Fuck_ , Alex thinks. _Look at you. Look at you, I can’t —_

 _Can’t what?_ Nicklas thinks, hazy and brainless, fighting against the plummeting drop of sensation in his stomach, oh God, he’s not — he’s —

Alex looms over him, his left hand by Nicke’s head and his right hand suddenly at Nicke’s throat, coiling his bond-clasp around Alex’s thick fingers as they form a fist. Alex kisses him and presses his leg harder into Nicklas’s cock and Nicklas comes, just like that.

It’s — is it sex, technically? Nicklas doesn’t know where the line is, but God, it’s a hell of a lot more than anything he’s ever done, and it’s so good it makes sparks burst behind his eyelids.

Nicklas blinks and finally breathes in, boneless. Wow.

Alex’s hand is still on his chest, knuckles white around the gold chain. His eyes are closed, and his mouth is barely open, breathing hard.

 _Alex?_ Nicklas thinks.

 _Yeah_ , Alex thinks, strained. _Just give me a minute._

Nicklas slides his elbows under him and pushes off the bed so he can kiss Alex, softer now, less desperate. Alex’s eyes flutter open.

 _Less desperate,_ Alex thinks tightly. _You’re insane._

 _You just came, like half an hour ago_ , Nicklas thinks, dismissive. Alex acquiesces to relinquish his bond-clasp and let Nicklas roll them over. He kicks off his jeans and, as an afterthought, his boxers, since they’re not doing him any good. Alex is impressively hard, his dick pushing the waistband of his jeans just barely off the skin of his stomach. Nicke runs his hand down Alex’s arm and Alex sucks in a breath and bites his lip until it blanches.

Jesus. _Nicklas_ is doing this to him.

 _What do you want?_ Nicklas thinks. He balances himself over Alex and kisses his cheek and his jaw, kisses below his ear. Alex is overheating, shivering under Nicke’s mouth.

 _Anything, anything_ , Alex thinks, _God, please, oh fuck, please,_ and Nicklas doesn’t quite know where this franticness is coming from, what the hell happened, but he’s not leaving Alex like this.

Nicke can’t get Alex’s shirt off, but he can get his jeans open and shoved down to his calves. He’s not wearing any underwear, apparently.

It’s kind of a lot to take in.

God, Alex is _gorgeous_ , all over, like nothing Nicke’s ever seen in real life or porn. His dick is long and thick and flushed a dark, painful-looking red, wet at the tip and all Nicklas wants to do is _touch_ it, get it in his hand and in his mouth and —

Alex’s hand drops its death grip on the bedsheets and flies to his cock, and for a second Nicke thinks he’s jerking off, but he’s not; Christ, he’s not, he’s just trying not to come.

 _Fuck you, Nicky, Jesus,_ Alex thinks.

Nicklas is doing this to him.

He wraps his hand around Alex’s, not squeezing nearly as hard, and runs his thumb up and down, over the warm, soft skin. He can do this, if he wants. He can have this.

Alex is incoherent, his thoughts a jumble of words that mean nothing, broken-down syllables.

_Please, please, please please —_

Alex’s dick is soft against Nicke’s lips, salty on his tongue. He can do this.

It feels like almost too much in his mouth, too real and too big and too _different_ from all his fantasies, but then Alex lets go of his cock and Nicke can really get a hand on him and start to jerk him off, and that, at least, is something he knows how to do.

Alex’s cock twitches in his mouth and there’s a bitter rush of precome, and Nicklas tightens his lips and sucks, imagining how it must feel, trying to get the clumsy pull of his mouth to match the wet heat in his mind.

 _Shit,_ Alex thinks urgently, _oh shit shit shit —_

Nicklas has two heartbeats to clue in and decide what he’s going to do and then Alex is arching up off the bed and yelling, out loud and in his head and neither one makes any sense; he gets even harder in Nicklas’s hand and mouth the second before he comes. It’s abruptly way too late to pull off, so Nicklas pushes down to meet his hand with his lips and _commits._

 _Holy shit yes oh God_ , Alex thinks, _Nicky I can’t I can’t Jesus fuck I can’t yes yes yes,_ and it’s the hottest thing in the universe, hands down, no question.

Alex comes for what feels like forever, then slumps back onto the bed like his strings have been cut. Nicklas pulls off and takes a breath though his nose and swallows. It takes two awkward attempts to get it all dealt with, and it’s extremely weird, but it’s pretty obviously worth it.

 _I need some water,_ Nicklas thinks. Alex slowly, slowly opens his eyes above him, like he’s drunk. Nicklas is not expecting repartée right now.

 _I can’t believe you’re here,_ Alex thinks, surprising Nicklas with a complete sentence; he reaches out not for Nicklas’s hand but for his shoulder.

 _I can’t believe it took me so fucking long,_ Nicke thinks. Most of the regret is gone, but it’s hard not to remember what he’s put Alex through.

 _It was worth waiting,_ Alex thinks. He smiles. _I can’t help it if I’m quicker on the uptake than you._

 _Somebody’s gotta go number one_ , Nicklas thinks wryly.

He can feel Alex’s eyes on his back as he walks to the bathroom, warm and heavy as his bond-clasp.

—

He drinks some water and thinks about how little this will change his life, and how much.

He wants to text Kris and tell him _hah_ ; he wants to text Mike and then turn off his phone and never look at it again because that’s going to be a fucking terrifying experience. Nicklas knows that there’s a lot ahead of them, knows that he’s going to need his head on straight. He can’t be confusing Alex with the mess of his thoughts. He can’t be confusing himself.

 _Is it a good thing?_ he hears his foolish child self ask, eleven years ago and so optimistic. _Were they in love?_

He can feel Alex out there, a presence in the periphery, steady and sure. No, love is not a necessary ingredient, he thinks, but he would be a fool to lie to himself again, still. More.

 _Alex_ , he thinks, closing his eyes reflexively.

 _I love you too, Nicky,_ Alex thinks, the absolute asshole that he is.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nicky stands in the bathroom with a water glass in his hand and thinks Sasha Things, and it’s crushing, overwhelming: undeniable.

Love is — love is hard to quantify. 

Sasha could cry; he could forget to breathe.

Love is everywhere is Sasha’s life. He knows how to be loved. He knows how to love and be loved in return, trusting and constant, and he knows how long he’s waited and more than anything, he knows Nicky.

 _I love you too, Nicky,_ he thinks.

 _I changed my mind,_ Nicky thinks, mentally narrowing his eyes at Sasha. _You’re a terrible person._

 _Shush_ , Sasha thinks. _Come back to bed._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Some people think soulbonds are a lie, a trick of the mind. Nicklas doesn’t care about them. Some people think bonds are a loss of freedom, and they are, but so is love. Some people think soulbonds are a question of will, but some people think that the moon landing was faked; some people think that money can buy you happiness.

 _Are you ready?_ Alex thinks, skating into Nicklas and bouncing him gently off the boards.

 _Get off of me_ , Nicklas thinks happily. _Lunatic_.

Alex grins and spins away. Warm-ups are almost over. The crowd is watching them, as if they could see the words form in the air, as if anyone could touch the threads between them.

 _Of course I’m ready_ , he thinks.


End file.
